▸ Column · Star Wars galaxy — a smuggler reading letters between runs, adapting a wedding-party-expenses dilemma into a flight-academy friend's lavish bonding ceremony
HAN SOLO replies.
Replied to by Han Solo, with a rebuttal from Leia Organa.
The letter
My bunkmate from the flight academy — Priya, twelve years my friend — asked me to stand at the front of her bonding ceremony, and I said yes before she finished the sentence. Then came the manifest. An actual color-coded manifest: 2,340 credits of required outlay. A formal robe I have to pay to have pressed beforehand. A four-rotation revel on a pleasure moon, private cabana and all. Custom-stitched jackets for the whole party. And a "group gift" that works out to 200 credits a head — for a galley unit she already owns in another color. I teach younglings to paint for 41,000 credits a year and I've got 1,100 to my name. Every time I hesitate, Priya mentions how her other attendants are "so excited" about every line item, like I'm the broken part. I love her and I want to be there. But I can afford to stand at her ceremony, or I can afford to keep my lights on — not both. How do I tell her that?
Han Solo replies
Twenty-three hundred credits to be allowed to love somebody on the most important day of their life. You hear how that lands? Sweetheart, somebody's got their hand in your pocket and they painted the spreadsheet pretty so you wouldn't look down.
Here's the thing about "her other attendants are SO excited." That's not information. That's a crowbar. People who actually want you there don't price you out and then make you feel cheap for noticing. I owe people in this galaxy — believe me, I know what a debt with teeth feels like, and I know the difference between a debt and a shakedown. This is the second one wearing the first one's coat.
So no, you don't go dark to make the cabana. Losing your electricity isn't loyalty, it's just dumb. There's a long shot worth taking and there's throwing yourself off a ledge, and a stand mixer in a new color ain't worth the ledge.
Tell her the plain truth — what you've got, what you don't, and that you want to be standing there anyway. Then watch what she does. Real friend says "just come." The other kind shows you who they were all along. Twelve years says she's the first kind. Make her prove it.
— Han Solo
Leia Organa weighs in
He's right that it's a shakedown. He's wrong that you sit back and "watch what she does." That's Han's whole trick — wait, observe, let the other person reveal themselves while you stay safe behind a wisecrack. No. You're the one avoiding the decision here, not Priya.
So decide. Today. One message: "I can give you 1,100 credits' worth of love and the ceremony itself — not the moon, not the cabana, not a mixer you own. I'll be standing where you put me." Send your number, name your limit, and stop waiting for permission to mean it. If twelve years survives one honest line, it was real. You don't find that out by watching. You find out by saying it first.
— Leia Organa
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