"But loving means giving of yourself. Trusting yourself with someone else. Entrusting yourself to someone else. How is that selfish? Hatred is selfish. Hating someone because they aren't what you want or do things you don't like. That's selfishness personified. To hate is to indulge the self. To love is to surrender the self. Like we surrender to the Force. Let it flow through us," Anakin had wanted to talk to Obi-Wan about this for so long.
"What of attachment from love, Anakin?" Obi-Wan sounded more interested in the conversation when he replied this time.
"Attachment through love simply means that you are even more selfless-you are attached not to your self, but to another luminous Force-being. Think about it, Obi-Wan. Someone who loved another- Someone who had a love-" Anakin stumbled.
"I'm listening."
"I know. I'm trying to give an example, a concrete example of love and trust and goodness and selflessness. But I'm afraid you won't like my example, Master," Anakin uttered the last sentence in a whisper.
"I like that you think, Anakin. I like that you are true to yourself, even as you question. We are as the Force has made us, Anakin. And between us, there are no secrets, no doubts, no questions that cannot be asked and answered honestly."
"Ok, let me try again. What if someone who was the most honorable, most giving, most self-sacrificing person was loved by someone who was less those things? Would not the love of the goodness prevent the lover from traveling the Dark path because to do so would be to lose the Light of the beloved?"
"Do you mean to ask if love would make the Lover a better person?"
"Yes, I think I do."
"So then, by your argument, the Love of the Lover has become the tool with which to battle the darkness of attachment, greed, jealousy. The Beloved has become a beacon of the Light side of the Force."
"Yes, Master! We are, after all, as the Force made us." Anakin smirked at using Obi-Wan's own words again. "Why would the Force give us these feelings, these passions and needs if we weren't supposed to use them to give us strength? To help each other. To make the galaxy a better place."
"What prompted these questions?" Obi-Wan had had discussions with Anakin in the past about love and attachment, but not recently.
"The troopers," Anakin said quietly. "They do so much for each other. Support each other through so many harrowing circumstances. How can their attachment to each other, and the valor it breeds, be detrimental?"
Anakin had always loved someone in the course of his lifetime, beginning with his mother. And ending with Obi-Wan-his mentor, his brother, his best friend, his Master, his-
Soul mate. He knew he could never survive without love in his life.
"I love you so much, mom," a five-year old Anakin said as he squeezed his mom tight.
"I love you, Ani," she replied with a return hug.
"Say, 'I love you too, mom!'" Anakin insisted. "That's the right way to say it."
Shmi smiled at her little boy. His heart was so big. He was always dragging some stray creature or person home with him. "I love you too," she repeated.
His latest acquisition wrapped itself around her legs as she tried to shuffle around without stepping on the feline. "What are you going to name her, Anakin?"
"I haven't decided yet," Anakin frowned in concentration.
"Well," his mother said, bending over to palpate her sides with gentle fingers. "Perhaps, Mama Kitty? She's going to have some kittens soon."
"She is?"Anakin breathed reverently. "Oh, boy! Then I'll have even more pets!"
"Or perhaps you could share some of the kits with your friends . . ." Shmi suggested.
"Yeah! Then we can all have more love. Hooray!" Anakin ran out the front door to share his good news with his friends. Shmi just looked after him and shook her head. The world was too cruel a place for a child with as big a heart as that one, she thought.
