The end

Why is happiness so capricious?

When we are happy we laugh.

But life is like a game, and, way too often, happiness goes away.

The dream about faithful love is over before we know it.

Why is happiness so capricious? And why is joy so short?

Often life is so absurdly hard.

Smiles turn to tears before sunset.

The one you care for, the friend you think cares for you, maybe he'll leave you.

Everything you promised and swore to is forgotten.

The words you whispered to me, I believed them.

But never again I will have such confidence.

Everything I've hidden in my heart, you just forgot it.

Why is happiness so capricious? And why is joy so short?

Often life is so absurdly hard.

Why, then, do we trust in love?

~

A truly meta caption today, so bear with me.

Lars Mikkelsen, the wonderful actor that gave Thrawn his voice in "Rebels", recorded "Hvorfor er Lykken Så Lunefuld" —Why is happiness so capricious— a classic Danish jazz song, written in 1937 by the singer and composer Karen Jønsson for the feature film "En fuldendt gentleman" —A complete gentleman—.

[You can find Lars' version on YouTube]

Danish is not exactly among the languages I attempt to speak, so I had to do a little bit of research and editing for translating the lyrics.

But, then, my heart!

The quintessence of Thrawn's tragic ballad of his persistently tragic life.

All the friends he lost.

Farewells, following each other interrupted.

Why is happiness so capricious?

Why is joy so short?

[For sweetening a little the angsty post (or making it even harder to swallow), I decided to pair it with a photo I wanted to take for a long time, featuring a sublime gift I received from @psiibee. Note also that, as stated, I do not speak Danish, so the lyrics above may be not correct at all. Let me know if I completely misunderstood something]

Prepared

Perfectly imperfect

"It was time to move on.

He’d been in motion since that dark day, years earlier. The darkest of days. [] Depa Billaba fought to protect him—and he fought to protect her. She died. He fled. She died so he could flee, but to what end? [] The young Caleb hadn’t known. He’d known only that, in the end, the Force hadn’t helped her. []

The Force was a death mark.

The early months had been a blur of terror for young Caleb. [] But weeks turned to months, and months to years, and no one came to his home—or cot, or tent, or patch of spacecraft floor—to wake him and drag him away. And the young man now known as Kanan Jarrus discovered that carousing eliminated those worries entirely.

So he’d done more of the same. He’d drunk to forget. He’d brawled to let off steam. He’d taken the dangerous jobs to fund his lifestyle—and then began it all again. He wasn’t some chivalrous nomad, skulking from planet to planet doing good deeds and leaving when things got too hot.

No, he left when things got dull. When the drinking money ran out, or when the bar-owner’s daughter suddenly wanted to marry him. []

And he also left whenever he got too comfortable. That was when the Force, tired of being suppressed, would sneak back like an ignored pet.

He didn’t want it complicating his world, making him feel like somebody’s prey again. And he didn’t like being reminded about what had happened in that other life."

~

"I see... fear."

"In the spiders?"

"Ezra!"

"Ah, your thoughts dwell on your apprentice."

"He's in danger."

"No! No. It's not Ezra or the spiders. It's... It's me. Fear, grief, anger, that's how they see me. That's how I see myself."

"Ah, your sight returns."

"I distanced myself from everyone. From the Force too."

"Your connection to the Force allows you to see in ways others cannot. If you can see yourself, you will never be truly blind, Kanan Jarrus, Jedi Knight."

"I understand."

"Where are you going?"

"Ezra needs me. They all do."

~

My head is just empty, my heart is full.

Magnificent.

Cocky yet insecure.

Rigorous yet kind.

So human. So divine.

So perfectly imperfect.

[Photo: stunning figure by @gentlegiantltd, finally in my grabby hands. Background by @cherriielle ]

Because I was in love with you

The craft of the Warrior

"Strategy is the craft of the Warrior. [] In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things. [] [The warrior] know(s) the smallest things and the biggest things, the shallowest things and the deepest things. As if it were a straight road mapped out on the ground. [] The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things."

~

"In strategy, your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased. Even when your spirit is calm do not let your body relax, and when your body is relaxed do not let your spirit slacken. Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited nor over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit. [] In all forms of strategy, it is necessary to maintain the combat stance in everyday life and to make your everyday stance your combat stance."

~

Miyamoto Musashi (宮本 武蔵) was born in the Harima Province in 1584. A rōnin at a time when the samurai were formally considered to be elite, but actually had no income unless they were landowners, Musashi pursued his spiritual enlightenment through kendō (剣道, "sword way").

Considered one of the most skilled swordsmen in history, he created and refined a two-sword technique called niten'ichi (二天一, "two heavens as one") or nitōichi (二刀一, "two blades as one"), in which the warrior uses both a longer (daitō, 大刀) and a shorter (shōtō, 小刀) blade at the same time (pair: daishō, 大小, "big/small").

[And, yes, you DO understand this reference]

The quotes above, redacted, are from "Go Rin No Sho" (五輪の書, "The Book of Five Rings"), a -messy yet enjoyable- compendium of Musashi's teachings.

Of which, clearly, Thrawn has multiple copies in all his datapads.

[Photo: mindblowing Japanese-inspired Thrawn patch by Patchlab.de]

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