▸ Column · A betrothal feast in the Star Wars galaxy, the letter brought to Yoda in his swamp exile on Dagobah
YODA replies.
Replied to by Yoda, with a rebuttal from Darth Vader.
The letter
Master — at my cousin's betrothal feast, I rose to give a toast although I had been told plainly that only close kin would speak. Two cups of spiced wine in, I was certain my tale of the time she and I got lost in the crystal caverns would "set the perfect mood." It set no mood, unless you count the betrothed's mother loudly asking a stranger who I was, and my cousin making a face I have never witnessed on a living being. I sent her a long apology that night; eleven hours later she replied with a single curt word, which I take to mean I am out of favor indefinitely. I did this to myself entirely — but I cannot work out how to climb back from being the one who hijacked a feast with a cavern story. Is there a protocol? Or do I simply wait until one of my own life events gives her the chance to settle the score?
Yoda replies
Hmm. Rise uninvited, you did. Hold the room, you wished. But beneath the spiced wine, a small fear I sense: that at another's feast, vanish you might. Unseen. So seize the moment you did — and crush it in your hand, as one crushes the bird he fears to lose. Familiar, this grasping is. Watched it ruin the mighty, I have, across nine hundred years.
Now recover quickly you wish. Mmm. But grasp at her forgiveness as you grasped at the toast, and further away push her you will. Once apologized, you have. Enough, that is. More words, send do not. Wait. Patience you must have, my young friend — slower it feels than fixing; stronger it is.
And this — wait until even the score you can? No. Set that down, now. The ledger of wrongs, feed it and to anger it turns, anger to suffering — yours, not hers. Cousins you are; war you need not be.
The greatest teacher, failure is. Smaller at the feast, sitting quietly will not make you. Larger, perhaps. Learn this, and recovered already you are. Hmm.
— Yoda
Darth Vader weighs in
The little one preaches patience. He preached it to me, also — while the fear he named so neatly ate me from the inside. Naming is not the cure, old man.
Hear me, child. You did not hijack a feast over a cavern. You did it because you cannot bear to go unseen — to let another hold the room. I know that hunger. I seized worlds with it and was alone in all of them.
And your talk of waiting to "settle the score" — that is the ledger that becomes a war. Burn it now. I kept mine. It cost me everyone I claimed to love.
— Darth Vader
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