Zero Sum

0 BBY

You feel a great disturbance, as if millions of voices have cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Except, it's not so sudden. Not for you.

Not when you were the disturbance. Not when those lives were like shards of glass, each piercing you to your very core.

It was something that you probably should have seen coming light-years away. Something you could have stopped dead in its track. But foresight has never really been your strong suit. No matter how hard you tried, no matter how many times things seemed to have finally settled down, they always cloud right back over again. They always wrench themselves back into some nonsensical conflict.

But then again, maybe that's what you've always wanted.

That back seat you've opted to take has been getting nice and warm these days. Somewhere along the way it's gotten easier to just bide your time in it, to intervene only when it appears most necessary. Because a million lives here and there really shouldn't be enough, not for you. That's a drop in the pond for a galaxy compromised of trillions. As far as you're concerned, that's just a million less ripples in that pond, a million less mouths to feed. And once they're gone you're back to the same routine. As if nothing has really changed, as if things have always been in their constant state of balance.

Balance.

That's what you've always been after, isn't it? What's led to this perpetual clash between dark and light, night and day, good and bad. That battle is what you can hang your hat on. It's what lets you set yourself apart from the endless string of petty disputes, try and focus on making reason of the unreasonable. Act like there's some greater purpose that's always been keeping you away.

Except, this is the purpose. This constant search for balance is all there is. Where one vagrant can gratefully accept a bit of change another should be getting stabbed out in a back alley somewhere. Always, in perpetuity.

That's what balance is for you. An unending chain of light and dark constantly outdoing each other. Where nothing should ultimately matter because it will always add up to a sum of zero. That's the outlook on life that works best. . . Because it's the one that absolves you from the burden of blame.

But it's not as simple as that. It never is with you. Because as much as you might numb yourself to it, try to ebb away and siphon off your connection to it all, there's no changing the fact that you are what they are. That you feel what they feel, say what they say, act how they will act.

You are all the worst things inside of them. Their worst fears, the greed that comes between them, the hate that burns deep within their hearts. You are the leader of every massacre, the spark behind every insurgency, the grand architect of all their latest superweapons.

But you are also all the good things.

You are the bond between two people, the space between spaces, the wordless intricacies that make life worth living. You are the sky, the star, the moon, and all the sappy love lyrics in between. The inkling of 'hope' that always seems to reach just in the nick of time.

Then again, maybe you're just a load of bantha poodoo.

A sleight of hand, a fool's party trick, the punchline that fails to land. A 'hokey religion' for hermits and farm boys that hasn't done a lick of good.

This is how it's always been. For some, you can be everything. A guide who's will one can dedicate their entire lives to studying and understanding. For others, you always have and always will be nothing. An all-encompassing entity that will always be there but has never been present. That is the paradox you exist in. But it's existing at all that's the most important thing. The only thing.

Because as long as you exist, you can still be the Force, and you can still be our ally.

Because when we choose to listen you will always speak, always guide us. Even now, as that same farmboy lines his X-wing up for its last attack run on the Death Star. You are there as a familiar voice calls out to him, as it reminds him to reach out for your forgotten guidance. You are with him as he turns off his targeting computer, as his hands tense over the flight controls and his vision blurs. You are with him as all hope appears lost and, with the push of a trigger, it is regained once more.

Because if there's one thing you've learned in this constant balancing act of the universe, it's that sometimes the only way to counteract the deaths of millions is to ensure the deaths of thousands more.

It's not balance, but it's as close as you'll ever get.

End