Sand Cube Assignment 3 Project Results
…Mace Windu boomed to them all. "What is the purpose of this assignment?!" He clasped his hands in front of him and looked at each of his students one by one.
Tinak smirked, "to make a tree?"
"INCORRECT!" Windu's voice was strong. He waved Tinak away with his palm and muttered. "Smart ass."
Kirano smirked. Obi-Wan scratched the side of his scruffy chin.
"What is the purpose of the sand cube assignment?" Windu boomed again.
Shisha answered. "Fine telekinesis practice?"
"INCORRECT!" Windu yelled at the wall and paced some more.
That's what Obi-Wan assumed it was. His brows flitted, perplexed.
"What is the purpose of the sand cube assignment?"
Kirano gestured lightly as he offered, "Impressionistic art?"
Windu turned to him with his bald head wrinkled. "Explain."
Kirano motioned to the painting. "The assignment is to make a tree and we are given the assignment with a picture of a tree in view, subconsciously guiding us toward what it's supposed to look like. But the transparent sand is always lighter than the opaque, making it difficult, if not impossible, to recreate the picture before us with the tools provided."
Deeply interested, Windu turned his shoulders toward Kirano from across the room and listened.
Kirano concluded, "Thus, one must sacrifice exactness of the mission in order to accomplish the likeness of the mission."
Windu crossed his arms at his chest and reiterated. "The spirit of the doctrine versus the letter of the doctrine."
Kirano nodded. "Yes, Master, that's another way to put it."
Windu frowned as he nodded deeply and with approving consideration. He peeled his back from the wall again and strolled toward Kirano. He bowed a little so he could look the young master in the eye, saying it loud and succinct. "INCORRECT!"
Obi-Wan wasn't the only one to chuckle into his own chest at all this. Even Master Yoda behind him seemed to be humored by Master Windu's comedic anger.
Master Windu pointed at Kirano as he turned to stroll away again. "Good guess, though. I like that one."
"Thank you, Master."
Master Windu stopped his boots in front of the pink blob in the cube and eyed Obi-Wan. "What do you think, Master Kenobi?"
Obi-Wan lifted his head, still smiling, shaking his head, and shrugged to admit it. "Beats me, Master. I don't know." Others chuckled with him. He admitted honestly. "I couldn't do it then; I can't do it now. I cannot think of any practical application for making a tree in a sand cube."
Master Windu nudged his boot and kicked Obi-Wan's cube over. Pink sand splashed into translucent white.
Obi-Wan's humor bled away to heartache as his eyes watched the hot pink, overly tall tree with crazy hair disintegrate into the translucent earth. He pressed his mouth and secretly meditated again, even as Master Windu continued the instruction.
"That much is correct," Master Windu muttered and continued his pacing. "In all your years as a Jedi Knight, Padawan or Master, you are never, ever, going to have a mission requiring you to make a tree in a sand cube." He turned to face them all again. "The purpose of the assignment is not the tree. The purpose of the assignment is not manipulating the sand. The purpose of the assignment is not about accepting failure, or the likeness of the goal in place of the definition of the goal." He strolled across the room in front of them all.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes, his smile gone, as Master Windu was again walking passed his deliberately destroyed project.
Master Windu's voice boomed against the walls, impatience building. "WHAT is the PURPOSE of the ASSIGNMENT?"
Obi-Wan stared at the cube fallen sideways, at the pink sand splashed into the white and checked his emotions.
Why did he care so much about his primary school project that it would make him insulted when Master Windu kicked it over? Was it because he worked so hard on it, even when he knew it wasn't going to be a work of art from the beginning? No. It was something else. It was because Obi-Wan didn't build an image of a tree in the pink sand; he built an image of Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan's jaw worked silently at his own admission. He lowered his eyes to his lap, not paying attention to the next guess that Tinak was now posing to the class. He chose instead to address his own straying thoughts and feelings about the tiny incident, soothing the emotional reaction before it grew to a beast, like plucking a tiny weed before it grew into a bush, and long before the seed of the dark side grew into...
…a tree.
Obi-Wan flashed with laughter.
He barely opened his eyes to find them all staring before he shut them again. His chest rumbled with silent humor. He curled over into his own lap, his face turning red as he mentally kicked himself in his own rear end.
"I think we have a winner." Master Windu seemed to smile and settled himself against the wall again, next to the painting of the tree. "Master Kenobi?"
Obi-Wan opened smiling eyes to Master Windu to find the Master's eyes carrying a hint of a smile back at him. "Frustration," Obi-Wan said.
Master Windu rubbed his lips together as he eyed him and nodded calmly. "Correct."
"Wait," Kirano blurted. "What?"
"It's an impossible task," Obi-Wan put it together only as the words were coming out of his mouth. "And an arbitrary one. You don't need to do it. And you can't do it. So why do it? And how hard do you work to get it done?" He looked at Master Windu and chuckled again at his revelation.
"Most importantly," Master Windu replied in a calm voice. "How do you handle the frustration of failure while you are so focused on success?"
The eight masters grinned at themselves as they soaked this in.
Master Windu continued. "Right now, all eight of your students are home, alone, faced with an impossible assignment. They have no guidance to cool their tempers. And they have been impressed that this assignment is key to their success, for they will not level up to the next year of training without mastering this skill."
Obi-Wan stared at his pink and white disaster and nodded to absorb this, imagining not only his memory of his original assignment but also imagining, and fearing, how Anakin was handling it at this very moment.
"But this assignment has stronger relevance to your training of your studentthan for the student to practice overcoming frustration." Mace continued, "Why?" He pointed at Shisha for an answer.
Shisha didn't disappoint. "How the student handles this will tell us a great deal about where their weaknesses are."
"Correct." Windu wagged a finger at Shisha. "Some of your students are going to get creative," he motioned to Kirano. "Gravity being the nemesis of Telekinesis, they will either make a white tree in the heavier colored sand or make a hanging cave tree and have the branches all pointing down instead of up. For a student who thinks outside of the box, a Master must focus on keeping the student within the doctrine for they are the ones who will have a tendency to stray."
Obi-Wan stared at his cube as he listened and suspected Qui-Gon was probably one of those types of students.
Master Windu continued, "Some of your students are just going to give up. They will put an effort into it but stop trying long before they reach the pinnacle of their ability. Either because they don't have your assistance standing there at the time or because they don't think it's that important. To these students, you must focus on independent motivation or further impress a Jedi's Duty, respectively."
Obi-Wan lifted his eyes to watch Master Windu stroll back and forth as his lecture continued.
"Some students will get so frustrated they will threaten to quit Jedi training entirely," Master Windu's eyes didn't land on Obi-Wan, but they didn't need to. "Those are the students so focused on their failure not because of the classroom assignment but because they don't want to disappoint you. Those are the students who need to be reminded that Master and Apprentice are a team; and that, regardless of their success, and regardless of any disappointment you may indeed feel, you will work together until there is nothing to be disappointed about."
Shisha muttered, speaking his query aloud. "They may give up on the cube, but we must show that we won't give up on them."
Obi-Wan looked over.
Mace Windu nodded to the other man. "Precisely."
Obi-Wan's eyes turned back to land on the pink and white cube. He smiled inwardly.
"The purpose of the sand cube assignment," Mace Windu concluded with a new but happy shout, "is to piss them off!"
Everyone blossomed with mild laughter.
Mace continued, "And piss them off so badly they will clearly reveal to you their worst dark-sided tendency," he shrugged his hands in the air, "so that you can address it."
Kirano chuckled again and swished his hand in the air to knock his own sand cube over on the carpet.
"Wait a minute," Shisha peeped, his eye angled in accusation at Mace Windu. "When Master Del'Cande gave me this assignment, she had a sand cube on her desk with a perfect tree in it."
"Yeah," Tinak nodded quickly. "So did Master Plo'Kun. He made a perfect image of a tree in the sand."
Obi-Wan nodded internally for he remembered that as well. A sand cube with an indisputable figure of a tree sat on the teacher's desk. Master Plo'Kun never let anyone touch it because he worked so hard on it, but there it was, without continuous effort to keep the sand in place, a perfect tree inside the transparent cube.
Mace Windu turned back to his burlap sack.
Kirano was teasing, almost. "Perhaps Master Windu can demonstrate how it was done?"
With a frown and a nod, Master Windu turned back around with a new cube in his palm. He focused his eyes on the cube and created the image as his fingers blossomed from the cube to show the image he created. Translucent sand quickly shuffled away from a perfect, perfect, green tree.
He held it still on the palm of his hand for all to see. Eight young Masters angled their heads and squinted their eyes, incredulous. Playful deceit tickled the air. It was clear there was more to it than it appeared. And based on Mace Windu's expression, he wasn't trying to hide the fact that there was a trick involved.
Tinak smiled wider. He leaned his elbow heavily onto his knee and pointed at his own sloppy project on the floor. "Now do it with that one."
Master Windu smiled. He closed his hand around the cube and threw it at Tinak. Shisha laughed, already getting it, even as Tinak grabbed the thing out of the air and looked closely at it. As he pulled it up in front of him after being sloshed around in the air, the translucent sand fell away from a fixed figure of a tree like a snow globe. "It's glued together?"
Obi-Wan laughed so hard he put his face into his palms. Kirano laughed loud and fell backwards on the floor like a defeated bag of grain.
"Are you kidding me?" Tinak continued to laugh. "All this time! The damn thing was glued together!"
Shisha curled over with laughter and snatched it from Tinak's hand. He shook it upside down and right side up. The tree remained motionless inside the loose translucent sand.
Obi-Wan's eyes were tearing with laughter. He sat upright and took his turn to play with the magician's tool a moment before passing it along to Kirano. He shook his head and noticed another lesson within this episode: just because you know something is out of place doesn't mean Force sense will indicate exactly what it is.
After enough laughter calmed and groans settled, Master Windu, smiling, swiped them all away. "Go to your students."
Obi-Wan stood and bowed to Masters Windu and Yoda, as did all the others, but the eight young men were still chortling and shaking their heads at each other as they filtered out into the library.
As Obi-Wan parted away from them to head to his quarters, he thought consciously about the next task at hand. "So, Anakin, let us see what your worst dark-sided tendency will be."
