▸ Column · Prequel-era Star Wars — an Outer Rim colony's communal growing-domes cooperative, with Qui-Gon passing through.
QUI-GON JINN replies.
Replied to by Qui-Gon Jinn, with a rebuttal from Darth Maul.
The letter
Half a cycle ago I answered "sounds reasonable" to a settlement-wide message about starting communal growing-domes here on our colony, and now I am somehow the elected steward of the Rosewood Dome Cultivation Council, which convenes every fortnight and has a comm-channel of thirty-four members. I have tried to step down twice. The first message went unanswered; the second time an elder named Phyllis wept openly, so I panicked and reappointed myself to a second term instead. Last week I formally mediated a quarrel between two growers over whether sunfruit or heirloom tubers carried "more community spirit," and I used the word "stakeholders" in complete earnest. My partner says I seem more purposeful than I have in years, which alarms me most of all, because I just caught myself at the second moonrise pricing matching council sashes. Please advise before I petition for a colony charter.
Qui-Gon Jinn replies
Notice what actually alarms you. It is not the council, not the tubers, not Phyllis weeping. It is your partner's sentence — that you seem more purposeful than you have in years — and you flinch from it because it is real, and real things ask something of you. Be mindful of that. You have spent two terms hunting for the door, when the moment has been quietly trying to show you a room.
But I will not simply cheer you on. Ask honestly which part of you was pricing those sashes in the dark. Is it the one that loves tending what grows, that takes the quarrel over tubers seriously because two people's care is genuinely at stake? Or the one that has discovered it enjoys being in charge? Those feel identical from the inside, and only one of them is worth your life.
And Phyllis. Everyone in your letter is a "stakeholder." She is the one who wept. The Council once assured me a certain slave boy on a desert world was nothing, no future worth a Master's attention. I have learned never to trust who a room has agreed to overlook. Look at her — really look. She may be the whole reason this matters.
— Qui-Gon Jinn
Darth Maul weighs in
Jinn counsels you to sink into the moment. I know precisely how present he can be — I was there, at the end of it. Be careful whose serenity you borrow.
He calls your trap a "room." I call it what it is. You tried to leave; a woman's tears closed the door; you thanked her by chaining yourself to a second term. That is not purpose. That is a creature who cannot say a single word and mean it. Learn silence. Sign nothing. Let your leaving be the one thing none of them see coming. The sashes can stay in the cart.
— Darth Maul
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