Synopsis: While Ensign Tilly has doubts about what it means to begin the Starfleet Command Training Program her mother and an alien stowaway speak to her.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of James Hillman’s acorn theory, the idea that just as an acorn has everything inside itself to become an oak tree, we all have an inner daimon, which has all the information we need to become who we are meant to be, if we only listen to it.
In “Runaway” Ensign Silvia Tilly is speaking with a projected image of her mother, who she had contacted for advice about her starting the Starfleet Command Training Program. Tilly’s mother believes that it is a mistake and her words upset Tilly, so she goes to the mess hall for an expresso. In the mess hall an alien, a seventeen-year-old Xahean, Me Hani Kia Hali Po, or Po for short, appears to her. Po needed some time away from her planet before she was coronated queen. Tilly tells Po about how her mother thinks she is making a mistake by going into the Command Training Program. Po tells Tilly about her planet and how no one loves her planet as she does. Tilly tells Po she will be a great queen. Po tells Tilly she will be a great commander.
In this episode, when Tilly becomes unsure about starting the Command Training Program and calls her mother for advice, her fears, likely that came from her mother, are mirrored back to her. Then when Po appears to her, she sees Po as a peer, as they are both brilliant, young, and female. Tilly at least feels Po is her peer until Po mentions that she is going to be coronated as the queen of Xahean. But then Tilly realizes that she is the queen of her own life. These series of events can be seen as an illustration of how Tilly’s inner daimon knew what she needed to experience in order to move forward toward who she was meant to be. Hillman wrote that our inner daimon even chooses the parents that are needed to stimulate, or provoke, us into taking the actions necessary to become who we are meant to be. Here, if Tilly had not been upset by her mother’s words, she would not have gone to the mess hall, and not have met the alien, Po. When Tilly was able to communicate with Po and identify with her as being brilliant and worthy of authority, she no longer had doubts about what path to take. That is how I image our inner daimons work in all of us.
mydailysoultrek 