So, I Have a Question

Can I ask you something?

Why do some people never seem to get permission to fall apart?

You know exactly who I'm talking about.

They're the person everyone calls when something goes wrong. They remember the appointments, organize the schedules, make the difficult phone calls, and somehow become the emergency contact for everyone else's life. They aren't necessarily the loudest person in the room. They're just the one everyone quietly trusts to figure it out.

We admire people like that.

We call them resilient.

Dependable.

Strong.

Capable.

And all of those things are meant as compliments.

But here's what I've been wondering.

At what point does being capable stop being something people appreciate...

and start becoming something they expect?

That question has been following me around for a while now.

Not because I was trying to answer it.

Actually, I wasn't thinking about it at all.

I was thinking about Princess Leia.

Now, stay with me.

I know that sounds like a weird turn.

It did to me too.

This all started because of one tiny observation that refused to leave me alone. It followed me while I folded laundry, drove to work, and stood in the grocery store staring at the coffee creamer because my brain had wandered off somewhere else entirely. Every time I thought I'd reached the end of the thought, it'd tap me on the shoulder again like,

"Hey...we're not done yet."

I've learned not to ignore questions like that.

One of the things teaching English taught me is that curiosity usually shows up long before understanding does.

Sometimes you've noticed something important.

Sometimes you've completely misread the situation.

The hard part is living with the question long enough to figure out which one it is.

That's really what Wild Knowledge is about.

Not having the smartest answer.

Not proving a theory.

Just giving curiosity enough room to do what it does best.

Because most of us have been taught to move through stories pretty quickly. We finish the book, watch the credits, decide what it all meant, and move on to the next thing.

I like moving a little slower.

Sometimes I think stories are trying to tell us something we miss the first time around.

Sometimes I think they're telling us something about ourselves.

And sometimes...it's both.

For me, it started with Star Wars.

Not the lightsabers.

Not the Force.

Not the battle between good and evil.

It started in a hallway.

Of course, I didn't know that yet.

At the time, I thought my question began with Alderaan.

I couldn't stop wondering why no one—not Luke, not Han, not the story, and definitely not me—ever stopped to ask whether Princess Leia was okay after watching her entire planet disappear.

It seemed like a simple question.

It wasn't.

Because every answer led to a better question.

And before I knew it, I wasn't just thinking about Princess Leia anymore.

I was following a pattern.

I just didn't know where it was going to lead.

Okay...But Hear Me Out...

So let's go back to Star Wars: A New Hope.

I know.

There are probably a thousand places you expected this conversation to go.

This probably wasn't one of them.

Princess Leia has just watched her entire planet disappear.

Take a second and really sit with that.

Not just her city.

Not just her family.

Her entire world.

Every person she grew up with.

Every place that felt like home.

Gone.

If you've seen A New Hope, you probably already know what happens next.

But here's what I'd love for you to do.

Pretend you've never seen it before.

Forget everything you know about Princess Leia.

Forget that she's one of the most iconic characters in movie history.

Just watch the story.

After Alderaan is destroyed, Leia is taken back to her cell.

An interrogation droid glides toward her.

The heavy door closes.

And the movie leaves.

Not Leia.

The movie.

It follows someone else.

That's easy to miss the first time.

Actually...

it's easy to miss the fiftieth time.

Because the story has somewhere else it wants us to be.

When we finally come back to Leia, Luke bursts into the detention block, strikes what can only be described as a very enthusiastic knight-in-shining-armor pose, and announces,

"I'm here to rescue you."

It's a fantastic scene.

Mostly because it lasts about five seconds before everything falls apart.

The hallway fills with stormtroopers.

The escape stalls.

Everyone starts talking at once.

There is, despite Luke's confidence, absolutely no plan.

Leia takes one look around, grabs the blaster, shoots the grate, and tells everyone to jump.

The princess rescues the rescue.

We've celebrated that scene for almost fifty years.

We should.

It's clever.

It's funny.

It's one of the reasons Leia became an icon.

But here's the part I couldn't stop thinking about.

Why did that moment feel so natural?

Not why did Leia do it.

Of course she did.

The movie has already shown us she's smart, decisive, and remarkably calm under pressure.

The question that stayed with me was different.

Why did none of us—including me—pause long enough to wonder what it cost her to become the most capable person in that hallway?

Somewhere between Alderaan and the garbage chute...

my attention shifted.

I thought I was watching a rescue.

I wasn't.

I was watching a story quietly hand the clipboard to the person carrying the heaviest loss.

And I accepted it without thinking twice.

That's the moment this stopped being a question about Princess Leia.

And started becoming a question about us.

Tamra Teaches

Can I let you in on a little English teacher secret?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask about any story is surprisingly simple:

Who's telling it?

Not who's talking.

Who's shaping what you see?

That's called point of view, and it's one of those literary elements that quietly influences everything. Point of view determines what information we get, what emotions we sit with, and whose experiences become the center of the story.

Think about it this way.

Imagine you and I both leave this year's family reunion.

Later that evening, somebody asks us how it went.

I might spend ten minutes telling you about the conversation I had with my aunties while we were making plates in the kitchen. You might be crying laughing over something a cousin did on that after-lunch "walk." Then we both realize Gram told each of us we were her favorite...right before handing us trash bags.

We were all at the same reunion.

But we'd tell completely different stories.

Not because either one of us was wrong.

Because we were paying attention to different things.

Stories work the same way.

A New Hope isn't trying to tell us everything that happened to everyone. It's making choices. It decides whose journey we'll follow, whose questions we'll ask, and which moments we'll linger on.

That's Wild

Here's the part that completely caught me off guard.

I thought changing the point of view would help me understand Princess Leia better.

Instead, it helped me understand myself.

Because once I stopped watching A New Hope through Luke's eyes, I realized something uncomfortable.

Leia doesn't really get a chance to react.

She gets a chance to respond.

Those aren't the same thing.

Reaction belongs to people who have a moment to feel.

Response belongs to people who don't.

Think about it.

Within hours, Leia loses her home, watches an entire planet disappear, survives torture, gets rescued, rescues her rescuers right back, escapes the Death Star, and immediately joins the Rebel celebration.

Somewhere in there, a human being had to be grieving.

But the story never asks us to sit with her grief.

And if I'm being honest...neither did I.

I was so impressed by her competence that I never stopped to wonder what it might have cost her.

That's the wild part.

The more capable someone appears, the less permission we seem to give them to be overwhelmed.

We assume they're okay because they're functioning.

We confuse strength with the absence of pain.

And once I saw that in Leia...

I started seeing it everywhere.

The oldest daughter who somehow becomes the second parent.

The friend everyone calls during a crisis.

The coworker who always has the answer.

The woman who's so dependable that people stop asking whether she's carrying too much.

They become the emotional "manager on duty."

Not because they asked for the job.

Because everyone quietly assumed they could handle it.

Maybe that's why this question wouldn't leave me alone.

It was never just about Princess Leia.

It was about how often we mistake survival for being okay.

And once I noticed that...

I couldn't unsee it.

Wild Thoughts

Can I leave you with one last thought?

I keep wondering what would've happened if someone had simply asked Leia how she was doing.

Not because I think she would've suddenly fallen apart.

Honestly, she probably would've brushed it off.

She still had a rebellion to help lead.

But I wonder what it would've meant for someone to ask anyway.

To acknowledge that strength and suffering can exist in the same person at the same time.

I think about that a lot now.

How often do we look at the people who always seem to have it together and quietly decide they're fine?

How often do we thank someone for being strong when what they might actually need is permission to be human?

Maybe that's why this rabbit hole stayed with me.

After I finished researching this file, I caught myself doing something I'd never done before.

I started paying attention to the people everyone else assumes are fine.

The friend who's always organizing the plans.

The coworker who somehow becomes the default problem solver.

The mom who remembers every permission slip, birthday party, dentist appointment, and still somehow gets asked, "Can you do one more thing?"

And, if I'm being honest...

I started paying attention to myself, too.

I've spent a lot of my life being the capable one.

The one who figures it out.

The one who keeps moving because there are kids to raise, work to do, groceries to buy, and tomorrow is coming whether I'm ready or not.

I don't think I realized how often I'd confused getting through it with being okay.

Princess Leia didn't teach me that.

She just gave me a place to finally notice it.

So now, when I meet a "Manager on Duty," I try to ask one more question before I assume they're fine.

Maybe you'll do the same.