Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View (From a Certain Point of View #1)

by Elizabeth Schaefer

That was the most bitter irony of war: The greatest acts of love for your family were the ones that kept you apart from them.

If it had parts, it could be understood.

All of these sing individual notes in the one great song of the Whills. No place is barren of the Force, and they who are one with the Force can always find the possibility of life. Awareness precedes consciousness. The warmth is luxuriated in and drawn upon before the mind is cognizant of doing so. Next comes the illusion of linear time. Only then does a sense of individuality arise, a remembrance of what was and what is, a knowledge of one’s self as separate from the Force. It provides a vantage point for experiencing the physical world in its complexity and ecstasy, but the pain of that separation is endurable only because unity will come again, and soon.

The living find it difficult not to tell the dead that which they already know.

Time is a circle. The beginning is the end.

Every person Obi-Wan ever truly loved—Anakin, Satine, Padmé, and Qui-Gon himself—came to a terrible end.

It is the kind of victory that most people never recognize and yet the bedrock all goodness is built upon.

As Obi-Wan will soon learn, the most beautiful form of mastery is the art of letting go.

I may be a country girl who’s never been offplanet, but even I’m aware that when a Jedi walks up to you and says, “Here, have a baby,” it’s not going to end well.

The only thing worse than waiting is being made to wait when you’ve resolved to do something after you’re finished waiting but now have no control over how long that waiting must last.

So we geared up, put on our inefficient, technically archaic, and altogether butt-scratchingly uncomfortable armor, put on our absolute garbage-dump helmets that don’t let us see a dang thing, and loaded up these E-11s you’ve given us, which require one to aim as far as possible away from what one’s shooting at in order to have half a chance of hitting it. So thanks for all that!

What actions did you take based on the initial events leading up to the incident in question? Nothing, we just sat there. Like, really, my dear interrogative application system, what kind of kriffing question is that? 110 gave us the order to move, so we moved. If we didn’t we’d be summarily executed, remember? Or long-distance choke-smashed by your beloved archwizard woo-woo-in-chief.

Weapons riled people up, reminded them that they could fight. It was bureaucratic mediocrity that made them accept their fate. Show a man a blaster, and he looked for a way to take it for himself and turn it on you. Tell a man he can fight in court, and nine times out of ten he’ll disappear just to avoid the tediousness.

And worst of all, Luke, as I am now, an old man, his face creased, his eyes haunted. He’s cut off from those who love him, consumed by regret and sorrow. It is too much to bear, a future I never want to see.

“Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force.”

“Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.”

If you can’t see the angle, it means you’re the one being played. You are, in fact, the sucker.