▸ Column · The Star Wars galaxy under the Empire — Obi-Wan in desert exile, the letter recast in cantinas, star systems, and sabacc tables
OBI-WAN KENOBI replies.
Replied to by Obi-Wan Kenobi, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
My partner and I marked one standard year together yesterday, and somewhere on the ride home it landed on me: I have never met a single one of their friends. They talk about them endlessly — a fellow they play grav-ball with every sevenday, someone whose bonding ceremony they traveled three systems to attend, a whole sabacc table that gathers at a cantina barely a sector from my quarters. Every time I ask to come along it's "next time," or "you'd be bored," or "this lot is a lot," and then next time quietly arrives without me. I've met their coworkers once and their sibling twice, so I'm not being hidden from everyone — only from the people they seem closest to. Am I making too much of wanting a seat at that table? Or is a year of "next time" something they've been telling me that I keep declining to hear?
Obi-Wan Kenobi replies
Well. You are not overreacting — and I notice you rather hoped I'd say you were. That question, "am I overreacting," is the comforting thing you've come shopping for. I'd be doing you no kindness to sell it.
I once trained a young man and told myself reassuring stories about him — he's tired, he'll come round, next time — until the day I could no longer afford the stories. Don't mistake my meaning: there are several truths here at once. He may be ashamed of something, or compartmentalized in a way that has nothing to do with you, or simply a coward about his own life. From a certain point of view, each is possible. But notice what the wall is made of: specifically the people he loves most. That is not nothing. That is information.
Now — patience, not the dramatic stand. Don't storm the cantina. Ask him one plain question, kindly, and then watch what he does rather than what he says. A year of "next time" will keep. Your refusal to hear it is the only thing not serving you.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
Darth Vader weighs in
Kenobi will counsel you to wait, to ask gently, to choose your moment. He waited nineteen years in the sand for his moment. Do not mistake that for wisdom — it was grief he had no better use for.
You already have your answer. A year of doors closing softly in your face is the answer. The "seat at the table" you beg for — that hunger to be certain of your place inside someone — I know it to the marrow. I clutched at exactly that certainty and strangled what I loved.
Stop negotiating for entry into a life that has already voted. Asking nicely will not unbar what was barred on purpose. It is too late for me. You are not nineteen years deep yet. Do not become so.
— Darth Vader
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