Synopsis: When responding to a distress call, the crew of the Enterprise find a human youth among the injured on a wrecked alien spaceship.
In “Suddenly Human” a young boy, Jono, born Jeremiah Rossa, is found aboard a Talarian training vessel. Lt. Commander Data has discovered that he is the long-lost grandson of a Starfleet admiral. After that, Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who is the only person aboard the Enterprise who Jono will respond to, is tasked with trying to re-introduce Jono to the customs of becoming human. Neither Counselor Deanna Troi nor Dr. Beverly Crusher takes into consideration that Jono wants to remain with the Talarians, particularly Captain Endar, who adopted him after his forces killed Jono’s parents.
Things for Jono become so desperate that Jono attacks Picard in his sleep, such is his determination to go back to the Talarians. This determination to be true to one’s inner drive can be analogized to what James Hillman calls the acorn theory. The acorn theory is that just as an acorn contains everything it will need in order to become an oak tree, each individual human is born, or maybe even before birth, has an inner daimon that contains all that an individual needs in order to become who they are meant to be. However, it is up to us to listen to our inner daimon and honor it.
In the end of the episode, Picard realizes that Jono is being true to himself in wanting to return to Endar and the Talarians and acknowledges his right to make that determination for himself. We should all be so lucky to have such an understanding parental figure. But that being said, part of Hillman’s acorn theory is that if we are born to parents who do not understand our inner drive and we have to fight to be true to ourselves, then that is because our inner daimon picked those parents and that fight as part of our purpose in life.
Original post created 26 August 2021
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