[ In her current state, it is easy to patiently weather his dry answers and the explanations that come with them, however particularly convoluted those rationalizations may seem to her. Rey mulled his response over by chewing slowly while she considered, her furrowed brow the only glimpse of a reaction before she had the chance to fully examine it.
Ultimately, it was the same way in which she was taught by the harsh environment of Jakku, and she could not ignore the truth in that: to some extent, it must be effective, because she had found success since leaving the desert. The more scavengers attempted to rob her of her finds for their own sake, the more quickly she learned to defend herself against them, to conceal what she had, to scour for the higher quality parts and trick them into stripping her of the useless junk. She had adapted to survive just as much as luggabeast to the unforgiving conditions, and pain had instructed her to hide her weaknesses, to stop others from exploiting them.
On the other hand, had she listened to those cutthroat lessons instead of her gut, guided by the Force, she would have sold BB-8 for food, would have abandoned the mission to run away with Finn and pretend the war between the Dark Side and the Light was someone else's problem, would have dismissed the Resistance as a few radicals trapped in an old age unable to embrace the change and certainty promised by the First Order. Those hard-fought lessons of pain taught her only survival, at any cost, and to do the right thing has meant opening up her weaknesses, making herself vulnerable, and accepting that sometimes strength comes in weathering the pain or taking it on for someone else, not avoiding it. ]
Avoiding pain seems like a very narrow understanding of the world to me. It doesn't leave much room for anything in between. [ Not everything, she understands now, is strength or weakness, life or death. Some things just are. And more importantly, survival at any cost is not always the right answer; some things cannot be corrected or saved with pure strength. ]
no subject
Ultimately, it was the same way in which she was taught by the harsh environment of Jakku, and she could not ignore the truth in that: to some extent, it must be effective, because she had found success since leaving the desert. The more scavengers attempted to rob her of her finds for their own sake, the more quickly she learned to defend herself against them, to conceal what she had, to scour for the higher quality parts and trick them into stripping her of the useless junk. She had adapted to survive just as much as luggabeast to the unforgiving conditions, and pain had instructed her to hide her weaknesses, to stop others from exploiting them.
On the other hand, had she listened to those cutthroat lessons instead of her gut, guided by the Force, she would have sold BB-8 for food, would have abandoned the mission to run away with Finn and pretend the war between the Dark Side and the Light was someone else's problem, would have dismissed the Resistance as a few radicals trapped in an old age unable to embrace the change and certainty promised by the First Order. Those hard-fought lessons of pain taught her only survival, at any cost, and to do the right thing has meant opening up her weaknesses, making herself vulnerable, and accepting that sometimes strength comes in weathering the pain or taking it on for someone else, not avoiding it. ]
Avoiding pain seems like a very narrow understanding of the world to me. It doesn't leave much room for anything in between. [ Not everything, she understands now, is strength or weakness, life or death. Some things just are. And more importantly, survival at any cost is not always the right answer; some things cannot be corrected or saved with pure strength. ]