The CW’s new series “Pandora” is an interesting science fiction drama. While the reviews have been largely mixed regarding the ratings fand how well it has been received by viewers, the show is chocked full of scenes that can actually teach us some valuable lessons. The setting is the year 2199, and the central character is Jax, played by Priscilla Quintana. She is charged with starting a new life and she also goes by the name Pandora. The show just kicked off on July 16, 2019, but here are five life lessons that we can learn from it so far.
1. You can’t always judge a book by its cover
One of the biggest life lessons that we’ve learned so far from the show “Pandora” is that people are not always who they say they are. The character who teaches us this is Xander Duvall. Xander has assumed the cover of being a teacher’s assistant for Professor Donovan Osborn. The truth about Duvall is that he is an Earth Confederacy Intelligence Services operative who is just posing as a common TA. He’s not there to help the professor with his work, he’s there to gather intel on everything around him, but he’s convincing enough to make the people around him assume that he’s just a lowly TA. We find this to be true in our society more and more and there’s proof of it in the increased sales in background checks and private investigations. Even people who are just becoming involved in new romantic relationships or business partnerships are wary of people that they have just met for the first time. It’s a growing concern in society today and it pays to at least be careful where money or your physical well-being is involved.
2. We are more resilient than we think
Jax, aka Pandora, is a young woman who has lost everything. Her parents both die and she is left with nothing, but all is not lost. She finds it within herself to find a purpose in life, which is something that is key to moving on after a tragedy strikes. In the case of Jax, she joins the Earth’s Space Training Academy to gain the skills that are needed to defend the Galaxy from threats from humans and aliens. While she is there she makes friends and she forges a brand new life for herself. She is reinventing the new Jax by using her intelligence and resourcefulness, plus she’s stretching out and gaining some new skills in the process. This is a life-changing event for Jax, and she shows us that it is possible to start from scratch and create a new and meaningful life regardless of how terrible things have been for us.
3. Sometimes it pays to bend the rules
Jax also shows us that by following the rules all of the time, you get left in the dark. When the investigation on her parents’ death case is closed, she is not satisfied and has a need to discover what really happened. She recruits a few of her friends and they steal a ship so they can get back to the planet. When they arrive, they learn what is really going on. Perhaps the most important thing that is discovered in this scene is that there is an alien who has the same DNA as Jax exactly, and this is the alien given the code name Pandora. Xander is the one who makes this discovery and on her adventure, Jax learns about his covert operations to do battle with the alien species bearing the same DNA. Sometimes you have to bend the rules to make progress, and in some cases, it’s easier to get forgiveness for hasty action, than it is permission. While this doesn’t mean we should go around breaking the rules all of the time, it does mean that sometimes there are extenuating circumstances and we have to use our best judgment on whether to act in a way that might not be approved, for our own benefit, as long as it’s legal, ethical and moral.
4. You can remember the past without living in it
So far, we’ve seen the reaction that Jax had to the attack on her home that killed her parents. It was a scene of terror and it affected her profoundly. She will never be able to forget the tragedy, but that doesn’t mean that she has to live and breathe it 24/7. Yes, it caused her to steal a ship to go out and investigate for herself, but she has gone on with her life and she has even found joy in new friendships as well as finding a new purpose in life. This character, along with the story-line teaches us a very important life lesson. Memories are reflections of the past, but truly living life is being here in the present, and being mindful of who we are right now, and where we are in life. It’s not in dwelling in the past.
5. It only takes one revelation to change your world forever
The show “Pandora” teaches us that digging around in your past can yield unexpected results. We learn this through Jax, who thought that she knew herself, but she discovered more about her identity that she wasn’t aware of. After she joined the academy to become a defender of the Galaxy, her life was on a solid path and she established a forward-moving trajectory towards something that gave her a purpose and added meaning to her life. When she learns that her DNA is exactly the same as an alien, it shakes the foundations of her existence. Was she really meant to become a defender of her world, or was she intended to destroy it? This is a question that has yet to be answered. Humans have an insatiable knowledge to learn more about their ancestry and many are taking the popular DNA testing to find out about their origins. For some, it has been enlightening, and for others, new problems have been exposed because of the things that they learn when their results are returned.
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