Training

“Free your mind,” J’Hara said to Karr. He tried, but his inside voice couldn’t be quieted. He was seventeen years old and his thoughts revved at a pace usually reserved for the engines of cruisers. Though he had practiced this many times before, he still couldn’t quite get it right. Still couldn’t move the object. Was it him? Was it his teacher? J’Hara had never truly explained how she knew so much about the Jedi, and he began to wonder if she knew what she was talking about. He was growing restless and impatient. This would probably go quicker if he had a real Jedi to train him, but of course there were none. They were gone. If they even ever existed at all. All he had was his grandmother. All he had was her word. And it was beginning to wear thin.

Of course, Karr loved his grandmother. She was the light in his universe, but even so, there were days when his recent cloudy disposition would block that light. He had been working with her for a few years, and yet he felt no closer to becoming a Jedi than to becoming ruler of the galaxy. He was of the age where adults stopped appearing as adults and started appearing as peers. Flawed peers. And in moments of discontent, Karr would notice the cracks in a lot of J’Hara’s stories. Like how a Sith Lord could live to over five hundred years of age or how the Jedi could move objects or make people believe things using only their minds. Were they meant to be fables? Larger-than-life lessons merely intended to make an impact on the listener? Because if so, there was a word for that: myths.

But they were also written about in history archives, so this confused him. Maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle. Perhaps the Jedi were wise people who had radical ideas of peace and were also good at wielding lightsabers. Maybe the idea that everyone was connected through an energy field was just a hopeful fantasy. Maybe the Jedi were just really good at convincing people of that.

“Try again,” his grandmother said.

Karr sighed. “It’s not working.”

“It will,” she said with her usual confidence.

“You always say that, but it never does. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe I don’t have the Force. Maybe I have some sort of tumor or something that’s giving me these headaches and we’re wasting time with this when we should be finding a cure.”

“That’s your mother talking.”

“We’ve spent all this time learning about the Jedi and yet I can’t do anything they can do. I can’t make anyone say what I want them to say. I can’t fight someone using just my mind.”

“Of course you can’t,” she argued. “And why would you want to? That is not the Force. Those are by-products of playing with the Force. You’re looking at it the wrong way. A Jedi does not want to fight. Jedi are the peacekeepers. They do what they do.”

“Well, what I wanna do is give up!” he shouted as he threw the cup across the room, half hoping his grandmother would yell back and fully hoping that she would finally reveal some last hidden secret that would solve all his problems.

But J’Hara did not take the bait. “I understand your frustration, my boy. I can’t claim to fully know what you are going through, for I am not like you. I do not possess any ability with the Force, but I am versed in it, and I am doing what I can to help you find your way.”

“But how do you know about the Force?” he asked.

For a moment her gaze went elsewhere. Inward, almost. And then she replied, “Like you, I found it around me. I asked questions. I was open to it. Do I have all the answers? No. Do I know more than most? Maybe. And so together we will take this journey and perhaps…find something wonderful.”

Karr took a beat before asking the question he hadn’t had the heart to articulate any earlier. “What if I don’t want to be on this journey anymore?”

He was almost afraid to look at J’Hara for fear he might have hurt her feelings. But when he did lift his gaze, he saw that she had the expression of someone who had been expecting that question for a long time. She turned to walk away, throwing out a casual, “You must do what you feel is right with the Force.”

Karr grunted. Sometimes her serene personality had a way of enraging him. But he agreed to humor her one more time. One more time so he could justify abandoning all hope. “Fine! I’ll try to levitate it again.”

“No,” said his grandmother, quickly turning back to him. “You’re angry. You want to destroy something. Very well. Destroy it! But do it from a place of calm. Not anger. Visualize it. Crush it.”

Karr looked at the cup on the floor. It hadn’t cracked when he threw it across the room and that worried him. Just his luck that he picked the toughest cup in all the galaxy to try to crack.

“Picture it,” his grandmother said. “Use the space around the cup to tightly condense your grip around it.”

Karr looked at the cup. Then he closed his eyes and raised his hand. Concentrating. Using the Force. Focusing on the space around the cup. But it was hard. Harder than he wanted it to be. Harder than it had a right to be.

“Concentrate,” said his grandmother again. A word he had begun to hate.

Concentrate!

He clenched his jaw tighter, but for every breath that seeped out of his mouth, a measure of doubt seeped into his brain.

Concentrate!

Karr couldn’t help thinking of all the holes in her stories. The confusing timelines, the convenient connections…

Concentrate.

The description of powers that no one had ever seen with their own eyes. That no one could attest to.

Concentrate.

The stupid act of trying to use imaginary powers to crush a stupid cup! She told him tales of Jedi levitating large objects, and yet he couldn’t even levitate a cup! Why? Because they were myths! They weren’t real! And he was no Jedi!

Concentra—

Karr spun toward his grandmother with an anger that he didn’t know had been festering for a few years. “I can’t do it!” he screamed. “I’m not a Jedi! There are no Jed—”

But when he looked at J’Hara, the old woman was grabbing her chest and falling to the ground. “Grandmother!”

J’Hara winced in pain and grabbed the nearby tablecloth, dragging it to the ground, plates crashing beside her. The sound of shattering glass confused Karr, since that was what this exercise was all about and yet something had gone horribly wrong. “What have I done?” cried Karr as he ran to her side. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

The old woman looked up at him weakly, but as always it was she who comforted him.

“You didn’t do this, Karr. There is nothing to be sorry about. I am an old woman and this is the way of things,” she said, gasping for air. “I’m glad I had the honor of showing you who you are.”

Karr’s mind raced as he tried to figure out some way to help her. But she didn’t seem to want help. She seemed proud. She seemed happy. At peace.

“Don’t be sad. Continue your training. Go out in the galaxy to learn your place in it. I will still be on this journey with you.”

And with a smile, she quietly passed away.

Part of Karr knew that it was just J’Hara’s time to go. But he felt responsible. Had she spent so much energy on him that it weakened her? Had she devoted all that time to training him for nothing? Karr couldn’t live with that. And he became more determined than ever to prove that his grandmother was right. That he would become a Jedi.


- Force Collector, Chapter 3