datapad
Sunday, July 22, 2007
How does it feel like to have something so dear to you fall before your very eyes? To have something everyone was counting on, something everyone trusted, something nobody imagined would fall, something which indeed had never fallen before, fall so ingloriously, and with such silent, sickening finality? And yet to have failed not to the opponents we thought we were fighting, not even to the opponents we actually fought, but to the opponents inside ourselves, the ones against whom we didn't even care to put up a fight? "The only dark you need fear, Jacen Solo, is the one in your own heart." Two days ago, 20072007, a date which will live in infamy. We found out how it felt. We did not play to our best. They did. And in the words of Robert Frost, "That has made all the difference." And now I know exactly how Obi-wan must have felt, in seeing his dear apprentice fall. How the rest of the Jedi Council must have felt as well, in seeing their exalted Chosen One fall. How the Americans must have felt at Pearl Harbor, How the English must have felt at the close of the British-American War, How Napoleon Bonaparte must have felt, at Waterloo. And to have fallen not against the forces without, but against the forces within. Moral of the story? Sometimes, life can really kick you in the nuts. Even when you think you've done all you can to prepare yourself against such a contingency. And there's not a thing you can do about it, once it's done. You pick yourself up, rub your sore nuts, and learn to take better care of something so important to you. So, where do we go from here? Where did Obi-wan go from here? He picked up the pieces (consisting of Anakin's lightsaber and his own bruised ego), retreated to Tatooine, and spent the next few decades studying for the A Levels. And then, when the time was right, he found himself a new apprentice, someone younger and fitter to carry on the torch of ages past, to reclaim the legacy that for so long had evaded their grasp. A new champion, to restore balance to the Force. A New Hope. Auspicium Melioris Aevi. |