▸ Column · The galaxy of the Jedi exile — Yoda answering from his swamp on Dagobah, the letter reaching him as if carried by the Force.
YODA replies.
Replied to by Yoda, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
Master — Joran and I have shared a life for four turns, and a season ago we finally took a little homestead with a yard out back. The moment I saw it, I pictured younglings running there. Foolish, maybe. Joran has always been plain that she wants no children — she even wore, as a jest, a charm mocking the whole idea, and I laughed, for I truly believed I wanted none either. But I am thirty-six now. I wept at my sister's birthing-scan, and the wanting has risen in me like a tide I cannot reason away. Joran is not cruel about it. She only says, gently, that her answer has not changed and will not, that she would sooner lose me than spend eighteen years resenting a life she never chose. I keep promising us a compromise — but there is no half-youngling, and I am terrified I am asking the kindest soul I have ever known to either betray herself or watch me go. How do I tell whether this is a grief I can release, or a future I will regret abandoning?
Yoda replies
Hmm. A yard you bought, and younglings in it you saw — before knew you even that want them you did. Tender, this is. Laughed at the jest once, you did; now weep at the birthing-scan, you do. Crept up like the tide, the wanting has, you say. Mmm.
But the fear beneath it, hear you must. Of Joran, no fear you carry — clear, kind, honest she has been. Of the grief, the fear is. That release this you cannot. That haunt you the empty yard will. That reproach you your older self will. Grip that fear too tightly, and "compromise" you name it — yet no half-youngling there is, and know this you do.
Cling to the image, do you? Or truly to the long life of it, long for you? Tell you which, I cannot. Nine hundred years I have lived, and still the heart's true want from its frightened grasping, slow to part them I am. Only the still mind, in time, parts them.
Patience, my friend. Sit with the empty yard. Honest with Joran, honest with yourself, stay. Force her to betray herself, you must not — crush you both, that grip would. Whichever way it falls, grieve you will. And the greatest teacher, that grief may yet become.
— Yoda
Darth Vader weighs in
The old one counsels patience. Here, patience is a hiding place. I know its comfort well. "We will find a compromise" — you already know there is none. You repeat the lie because the truth is unbearable, as I named my cruelty "necessary" for decades to keep from looking at it. So hear me. Do not try to hold her by waiting until she breaks, by letting her watch you grieve her into surrender. I held someone I loved by force, and made the very loss I feared certain. Choose the child, or choose her. But choose. Face the unbearable thing — and do not call the avoidance wisdom.
— Darth Vader
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