So You Want to Be a Jedi?

by Adam Gidwitz

  LESSON BETA:

  JEDI HAVE TO BREATHE, TOO

  Second lesson. Ready?

  This time, you’re going to do the same thing as before, but someone else is going to count for you. Get whoever is nearby. When you close your eyes, they should silently start to count to ten. When they get to ten, have them gently tap you on the shoulder. If you have a watch or a phone that will time you, feel free to use that.

  This time, when your eyes are closed, try not to have any thoughts. Just feel the air come in your nose and out of your nose. Be aware of every single breath. In and out.

  Go ahead: meditate.

  Did you have any thoughts, my young padawan? It’s not easy to still your mind, is it? It took me many years before I could quiet my mind through meditation. But keep trying. It is the first step on the path of the Force.

  YOU GROAN. Your head is pounding. Your eyes feel like they’ve been shut with staples. Slowly, you force them open. You blink, and blink again. A wampa is feasting on your tauntaun—while sitting on the ceiling. Can wampas sit on ceilings? Your temples throb.

  You black out again.

  Later, you wake up. The tauntaun is almost entirely eaten. The wampa, its white fur caked with blood, is no longer sitting on the ceiling. It is sitting on the floor, and you are hanging upside down. Maybe you were hanging upside down all along.

  You peer up at your feet. They are trapped in ice on the ceiling. You yank at them. They do not budge.

  You try to lift your body up to them, but you are too heavy, too woozy.

  You stare at the blood-covered wampa. What will it eat when it’s finished eating the tauntaun?

  Never mind. Stupid question.

  You look over the cave again, trying to ignore the wampa gnawing on your tauntaun’s bones. Which is not easy.

  You look past the beast.

  You don’t see what you’re looking for.

  You look behind you.

  Nope.

  Finally, you examine the area around you.

  There it is. Half buried in snow.

  Your lightsaber.

  No blaster. That’s probably somewhere out in the middle of a snowfield, petrifying until the end of this planet’s ice age.

  But that’s okay. You prefer the lightsaber anyway.

  It’s not that far from you, so you reach for it, your arm straining in its socket, fingers grasping at the air, as if they could drag you closer. But they can’t. You exhale, and let your body go limp.

  The wampa is now gnawing on the tauntaun’s enormous thigh bone, slurping and sucking at the supple sinews.

  You look back at the lightsaber. Then you think of Old Ben. Obi-Wan Kenobi. The man who gave you the lightsaber. The man who turned your father into one of the greatest Jedi Knights of all time. The man who began to train you—before he was killed by Darth Vader. Darth Vader, the Emperor’s right hand. Darth Vader, who killed your father.

  You stop your mind from wandering. You focus on the lightsaber. You know what Old Ben would tell you to do.

  Close your eyes. Count to ten, letting the thoughts clear from your mind. Breathe in and out. In and out. Until your mind is as empty and bright as a snowfield on a clear morning. Until you can feel everything around you. As if everything in the room has a physical shape on the field of your mind. You feel the great, hot wampa. You feel the smooth, sticky bones of the tauntaun. Then closer. The mound of snow. The lightsaber.

  You touch it, in your mind. You reach out your hand. You do not strain. You just reach. You hold the lightsaber in your mind. And then, from the snowbank, the lightsaber jumps to your hand.

  You open your eyes. There it is. Actually in your hand.

  And there is the wampa, standing in front of you, staring at you, perplexed. And furious.

  You ignite the lightsaber.

  Its blade is silvery-blue. It hums, burning against the darkness. It is as serene and as powerful as the Force itself. And dangerous. Holding a lightsaber feels dangerous. At least, it does to you.

  Though, right now, it’s more dangerous to that blood-soaked wampa standing in front of you.

  You swing the lightsaber at the ice holding your feet. You hit the ground just as the wampa lunges at you—

  And its arm goes twirling across the cave.

  The wampa staggers back, staring. The lightsaber is so sharp, so hot, that it has cauterized the wound. There is no blood. But there is no arm either. The great beast is in pain. And now it is afraid of you. Very afraid.

  Keeping your eyes trained on the savage ice beast, your lightsaber raised high, you slowly back out of the cave.

  LESSON GAMMA:

  REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMETHING—WITH YOUR MIND

  You probably think that your next test will be trying to move something with your thoughts.

  Yeah, we’re not going to try that.

  Yet.

  I mean, you can give it a go. But don’t be discouraged if you fail. Moving stuff with your mind is a wee bit difficult.

  No, for this test, I want you to close your eyes—not yet—and breathe. It might help you to count to ten at first. Then just focus on your breath. Once you’ve been focusing on your breath for a while, I want you to feel what’s around you. Not with your hands—with your mind. Explore the objects of the room. Your eyes should still be closed. Don’t try to remember what’s around you. Just feel it. Start with what you’re sitting on, then anything that’s in contact with your body. Work outward. What’s touching those things? Feel their shapes in your mind.

  Finally, I want you to focus on something near you, but that you are not touching. Trace it with your mind. Feel its shape.

  Reach out. Touch it. Open your eyes.

  Were you right? Was it where you thought it was? Did it look like you thought it did?

  If not, don’t worry. Just try it again. Remember, the most important thing is to feel everything around you. The guessing part at the end is just for fun.

  THE WIND IS AT GALE SPEED. Even if you knew which direction to go, you couldn’t do it. The wind throws you this way and that, like you’re a newspaper in a hurricane. Behind you, your trudge marks trace a crazy zigzag pattern in the mounting snow.

  Your legs are shaking with strain. Your lungs are burning. Your sweaty hair is literally frozen.

  You fall.

  You lie, half buried in the snow. You try to rise. You fail. Your eyes close. The snow feels warm, compared to the whipping wind above. If you could just sleep for a moment or two…Just a little sleep…

  (This is, of course, how you die in a snowstorm. Did you know that? Well, now you do. Never fall asleep in a snowstorm.) (See! Look at all the important things I’m teaching you!)

  The minutes drift by like dreams….The cold seeps through your thick thermal clothes, creeps into your skin, and then crawls along your veins, slowly freezing them. It is coming, like an undertaker, for your heart.

  “Luke…”

  You hear it faintly. A voice. Someone you recognize. Go away, you think. I’m sleeping.

  “Luke…”

  The voice is nearby. Maybe you should raise your head to see who’s there. But you’re so tired. The cold is building a snow fortress around your heart, slowing it down.

  “Luke…”

  You decide just to go back to sleep. The cold is so gentle, and your heartbeat seems, now, so superfluous.

  “Luke…”

  The voice sounds like Old Ben’s. But that’s not possible. Old Ben is dead.

  Unless you’re dead, too…

  And then you realize that you are dying.

  Wake up! you shout at yourself. But your eyes won’t open. You cannot raise your head. You are going to die.

  The voice is speaking. “Luke…Go to the Dagobah system.” It sounds like Ben. “Find my old teacher, Master Yoda…”

  “Ben!” you cry, or try to. “Ben!” Why isn’t he helping you? Where is he? You try to stay conscious, but you are failing, falling, failing, and the cold is laughin
g its quiet, sinister laugh….

  “LUKE!”

  You thrust your eyes open, shattering the ice that has formed a crust over your eyelids.

  Han Solo is standing above you.

  “Luke, don’t give up on me, kid.” He is pulling you from the snow. You are hanging limply in his arms. You are trying to help him, but you literally cannot move. You’ve heard that Jedi can stay conscious after death, existing in the fabric of the Force. Maybe you’re doing that right now. You certainly feel dead.

  You suddenly become aware of a tauntaun. Good! A tauntaun is good. A tauntaun can carry you somewhere. Maybe somewhere warm, where you will be buried, because you are dead. “Han!” you say, “put me on the tauntaun.” But no sound is coming out of your mouth.

  And then Han’s tauntaun rears back, roars to the black, snow-speckled sky, and keels over.

  “Oh, great,” Han mutters. He reaches over and places his gloved fingers on the beast’s broad neck. He curses. The tauntaun’s heart has stopped. Now it cannot carry you to the warm place so you can be buried. You have never felt sadder in your life. You wonder if you are not a little bit loopy right now.

  The scruffy space pirate looks back and forth between the lizard beast and you. Finally, he reaches over you and unhooks your lightsaber from your belt. He ignites it and looks at the tauntaun. “Sorry, old buddy,” he murmurs. Then he slits the tauntaun’s belly with the glowing blade. Gooey, steaming innards slide out onto the snow. “Ugh,” he mutters. “And I thought they smelled bad on the outside…” Han lifts you from the snow and slides you into the beast’s stinking belly. It feels warm and soft and smells worse than anything you have ever smelled. He is burying you! What a good friend Han is! “This isn’t going to be pretty, kid,” he murmurs. “But it’ll keep you alive until I can get the portable shelter up.”

  Alive? you think. But I’m not…

  And then you black out. Thankfully.

  The sun rises the next morning on two snowspeeders. Their pilots scan the blinding snow with shaded eyes. “Captain Solo?” they call into their transmitters. “Commander Skywalker? Do you copy? Do you copy?”

  The planet is wide, bright, and empty before them.

  And then it isn’t.

  Their transmitters crackle to life. “Good morning!” they hear. “So nice of you to drop by!” It’s Han Solo.

  The pilots smile. “Echo Base, this is Rogue Two. We found them. Repeat. We found them….”

  LESSON DELTA:

  DO SOMETHING DISGUSTING

  Sometimes we have to do things that are gross.

  You are at someone’s home. They serve you a plate of fried kidneys. You eat it.

  You are talking to a friend. She picks her nose right in front of you. You keep talking to her as if nothing happened.

  You are standing beside a small cube of water. Hundreds of people have already been in this water today. Their dead skin cells are floating all over the surface. At least fourteen people have also peed in this cube of water. You dive in.

  Wait. That last one is called “going to the swimming pool.” That’s not gross at all. That’s supposed to be fun.

  But why?

  Shouldn’t that be at least as gross as eating kidneys?

  In fact, why is eating kidneys gross? You eat muscles all the time. That’s called “meat.” And if you eat hot dogs, you eat parts of an animal that are way grosser than kidneys.

  All I’m trying to say is that “gross” is a matter of opinion. In some galaxies, eating kidneys is gross. In other galaxies, swimming pools are.

  As a Jedi, you can’t be afraid to do something because the people around you think it’s gross. You have to overcome your disgust, your fear. And everyone else’s opinion. That stuff is all relative—in some places this is gross, in others that is. Be above all that.

  The Force is.

  Next time there’s something that grosses you out, do it. Eat the kidneys. Swim in the pool. If it’s not dangerous, and won’t make you sick, overcome your disgust and do it.

  Except picking your nose in public. Don’t do that. That’s gross in every galaxy.

  YOU’RE LYING IN BED. Down the side of your face runs a bright, angry scar. You know it’s there because it makes your skin feel tight, sore. Your heart is beating slow and hard, like a jalopy that doesn’t want to start.

  The doors to the medical bay open, and R2-D2 rolls in, followed by a bubbling C-3PO. “Oh, Master Luke! It’s so good to see you fully functional again!” C-3PO’s head totters back and forth when he speaks.

  “Boop beep beep beep boop boop beep boop,” says the fancy trashcan.

  “Artoo expresses his relief as well.”

  You force yourself to sit up and ignore the shooting pain in your jaw and the roaring protest of that beating knot of muscle that keeps blood flowing through your body. You gaze at these two. They’re like a comedy routine, the two of them. You remember buying them on Tatooine, to help out around your uncle’s moisture farm. You didn’t expect R2 to have a hologram of Princess Leia, crying out for help. Nor for him to lead you to Obi-Wan. You’ve been through a lot with these droids. You think of them, now, as your friends.

  Speaking of friends, Han saunters in from the corridor and grins at you crookedly. “How you feelin’, kid?”

  You shrug.

  “You look okay to me. I mean, as okay as you ever have.”

  “Well, it’s thanks to you.”

  “That’s two you owe me.”

  He’s right. There was a space battle with an enormous Imperial space station, not to mention a few TIE fighters, that would not have turned out so well if not for Han.

  Leia’s head appears in the doorway. You think of the first time you saw her, shimmering and blue and projected from R2’s hologram lens. Calling for help. Calling you, though she didn’t know it. There’s something about her. You can’t place it. But she’s…she’s really…something. You’re not sure what.

  Upon seeing Han Solo, she frowns. But then her eyes fall upon you. Her face lights up. She rushes to you and enfolds you in her arms.

  But Han breaks in: “Well, Princess, it looks like you managed to keep me around a little while longer.”

  Leia glances disgustedly back at him. “I had nothing to do with it, and you know it. The general thinks it’s too dangerous for any ships to leave the system right now.”

  “That’s a good story…But I think you just can’t bear to be away from a gorgeous guy like me.”

  You glance between them, bewildered. What’s all this about?

  Leia rolls her eyes. “I don’t know where you get your delusions, laser brain.”

  Laser brain. You chuckle.

  Han turns on you. “Oh, you think it’s funny, kid? Well, you should have seen us alone in the south passage. She expressed her true feelings for me.”

  Leia’s face has turned three shades of red. “You stuck up…half-witted…scruffy-looking…nerf herder!”

  Han’s eyes go wide. “Who’re you calling scruffy-looking?!”

  You have no idea what is going on. Why are your friends fighting over such stupid things?

  Han’s turned back to you. His words are spitting from him like bullets. “Well, it looks like I’ve got her all riled up, kid. You know, love is like that.”

  Love? you think. You are completely lost.

  Leia’s eyes are suddenly dangerous. “Well,” she says to Han, “I guess you don’t know everything about women.” And with that, she bends down and kisses you—full on the mouth. It’s warm and makes you break out in a sweat and feels weird.

  And then Leia storms from the room. Han stares after her, dumbfounded. So do you.

  I know, young Padawan. I promised I’d skip these mushy parts. But you’d want to know about getting kissed, wouldn’t you? So you could wipe it off?

  I promise, though, I’ll skip any future situations like that. Probably.

  Suddenly, a tinny alarm blares out of the speaker in the wall. “Foreign object
breach—Marker 2. Repeat: Foreign object breach—Marker 2.”

  Han shakes off the scene with Leia. “Be right back, kid. You stay here.”

  You nod and lean back, thinking about that kiss….

  Two hours later, Han explodes into the medical bay.

  “News?” you ask, sitting up and then instantly regretting it, as pain lances through your face.

  “It’s an Imperial droid,” Han spits.

  Suddenly, you can’t feel the pain anymore. Your heart has just shifted to lightspeed. “Did it spot us?”

  Han looks at the floor. “I may have blown it up.”

  You sit back and close your eyes.

  “We’re evacuating the base,” Han continues. “The whole planet. We’ve got to go.”

  You sigh. It’s been a good base, all things considered. But you nod. He’s right. You’ve got to go.

  LESSON EPSILON:

  PEACE IS A SUPERPOWER

  You’ve practiced meditating over the course of ten seconds. Now I want to teach you instantaneous meditation.

  This is how you do it:

  Close your eyes.

  Smile. Gently. Don’t force a smile. Just let the corners of your mouth rise.

  Breathe in through your nose, deeply, until the air is all the way in the bottom of your belly.

  Breathe out.

  Keep smiling.

  Open your eyes.

  Try that.

  The next time you’re in a situation that makes you uncomfortable, or angry, or jealous, or so proud you think you might act like a total jerk, try this. Its effects may not last very long, but you’ll feel at peace for the next few minutes.

  And that might be just long enough to help you survive whatever it is you need to survive.

  AN IMPERIAL STAR Destroyer is bigger than the biggest ship you’ve ever seen. It would take you a day to walk from one end of it to the other. A full day. That’s like the size of a city. A big, bristling, flying city. With guns. Lots of guns.