“So you were born to feel ‘nice’? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders, and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?” - Marcus Aurelius
In an episode of the Ahsoka series titled “Shadow Warrior,” Ahsoka has lost a duel with the former Jedi turned mercenary, Baylan Skoll. She’s been cast into the sea and left to die. Sinking like a stone and unconscious beneath the waves, Ashoka wakes up in what’s known in Star Wars as the “World Between Worlds”. It’s not so much a physical place as it is a spiritual dream state. It’s endless darkness up and down, left and right, both real and unreal at the same time.
Ahsoka examines her surroundings and turns to find Anakin Skywalker waiting for her there in the abyss. Long dead, Ahsoka’s old Jedi Master is grinning at her the way he once did when they were close. He has a lesson for Ahsoka, and it’s one of the most important insights in all of Star Wars.
“I’ve come to finish your training,” Anakin says.
“What is the lesson, Master?” Ahsoka answers reluctantly.
“To live. Or die.”
Anakin draws his blue lightsaber and forces Ahsoka to fight. She resists, staying on defense, the story of her life. Then Anakin swings low and shatters the illusion of solid ground beneath her, plunging Ahsoka into the infinite darkness. Ahsoka regains consciousness in the desert and is surrounded by Clone Troopers engaged in battle with droid armies beyond the next ridge line. Like a scene straight out of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, Ahsoka has been dropped into the past. She stands on a gloomy battlefield in the body of her 14-year-old self with Anakin there as her guide.
The Clone Wars were a time of deep trauma for Ahsoka. Like so many Jedi, she was just a child and an inexperienced Padawan forced into becoming a frontline soldier in a brutal civil war. The Jedi should not have been in this situation in the first place. Obi-Wan Kenobi famously referred to the Jedi as “guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic,” and yet, there they were, on a battlefield surrounded by death and making decisions that would inevitably get more people killed.
What would Ahsoka make of this situation?
This is the test. We don’t control what happens to us or in our small corner of the galaxy.
Just as Aang was born the Avatar, Frodo Baggins had no control over the Ring of Power entering his life, and Peter Parker didn’t ask to be bitten by a radioactive spider. Things happen to us that seem like they’re robbing us of our agency and our choice, but seeming so doesn’t make it true.
Viktor Frankl observed in his book, Man’s Search For Meaning, written after his experience of the Holocaust and Nazi death camps, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Ahsoka is stuck on the question of her agency. She didn’t CHOOSE to be a Jedi, she didn’t CHOOSE civil war, and she most certainly didn’t CHOOSE to lead soldiers into battle where she’d make life-or-death decisions for them.
The whole reason for this extraordinary vision is that, although the war eventually ended, Ahsoka is worn down by the struggle of failure, death, and its consequences. Every time she takes on greater responsibility, someone gets hurt.
The battle quiets, and Anakin tells Ahsoka, “I’m teaching you how to lead, how to survive, and to do that you’re going to have to fight.”
“What if I wanna stop fighting?” replies the weary Ahsoka.
Anakin Skywalker doesn’t skip a beat in answering, “Then you’ll die.”
With that, Anakin reignites his lightsaber and again charges into the fray.
Back in the “real” world, where Ahsoka is sinking like a stone to the bottom of the ocean, a new war is on the verge of breaking out that will engulf the galaxy. This supernatural vision of hers is not about her past; it’s about the future and what is required of her. There comes a point where your shame and fear are no longer particularly interesting to people.
Tomorrow, there might be an opportunity to hit the fainting couch and have someone dissect your psychology, but today you’re needed on your feet.