▸ Column · Star Wars — Obi-Wan in desert exile on Tatooine, answering a spacer's letter; the dilemma transposed to a cantina, a squadron, and a relocation to a distant colony world.
OBI-WAN KENOBI replies.
Replied to by Obi-Wan Kenobi, with a rebuttal from Han Solo.
The letter
My closest friend since our academy days — call her Priya — has been bonded to a man named Marcus for nearly four years. Last cycle I saw him in a cantina two systems over, sharing a meal with a woman who was very plainly not a squadmate: his hand on her knee, the whole picture. When he spotted me he went grey and mumbled something about a "squadron gathering" that, as far as I could see, had exactly one attendee. Meanwhile Priya is half-frantic arranging a relocation to a distant colony for a posting she accepted partly because Marcus swore he'd go with her. I've said nothing. But I can't read her messages the same way now, and every time she sends me excited holos of housing on the new world, I feel ill. I know the right thing is to tell her. The trouble is she has a long record of turning on whoever brings bad news — and I'm honestly terrified she'll keep him and lose me.
Obi-Wan Kenobi replies
Well. That is an unfortunate thing to have witnessed, and you have my sympathy. Now — shall we look at it honestly?
You already know the right thing. You said so. What you've actually written me about is permission to keep not doing it, and I'm afraid I can't give you that. I once trained a young man I loved, and for years I told myself reassuring stories about what I was seeing in him rather than the true one — because the true one was unbearable and would have cost me something. That habit did not protect him. It cost me everything, and it cost him a great deal more.
So look squarely at your own hesitation. "She shoots the messenger" and "she might choose him" are real fears — but notice they are also wonderfully convenient ones. They let you stay silent and call it strategy.
I usually counsel patience. Not here. Waiting, in this case, is the lazy comfort, not the wise course — she is signing her life over to a faraway world. You owe her what you saw, plainly: not a verdict on the man, not a scene, just your own eyes' report, offered with kindness, before that lease binds her. The truth keeps. The lease does not.
— Obi-Wan Kenobi
Han Solo weighs in
Kid, Kenobi's right for once, so let me just add the part he's too polite to say plain: Marcus is a coward. Went grey, invented a happy hour of one — that's a guy who already knows what he is. Watch the hands, not the mouth, and his hand wasn't on Priya's knee.
And quit running the math on whether you'll "lose her." I know that song — look out for number one, hedge your bets. A friend who torches you for being straight was never much to lose. A friend like Priya, who's about to ship across the galaxy on a lie? You show up. Before the ink dries. Don't make a whole thing out of it. Just go.
— Han Solo
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