Star Wars Chat Pack: What if you had psychometry?

Welcome to Day 23 of my NaBloPoMo Challenge, in which I randomly pick a card from the Star Wars Chat Pack.

Today’s question is: Some Jedi can sense the history of an object when they touch it. If you had this ability, what item would you want to pick up and learn about?

I think this Force ability–called psychometry–is quite interesting, and seems rare. Jedi like Quinlan Vos and Cal Kestis have this ability, and can often sense feelings and/or see events linked to an object. Ahsoka, however, did this in her show with shards of the map to find out what happened to Sabine. I don’t recall her ever doing that before, so maybe it’s something that can be learned.

Anyway, what would I want to touch and learn about?

I can’t really think of anything in particular in my life or in the world in general, unless they’re mysterious historical objects. Historians or archeologists would love this ability–they can get information on just about anything they discover, without having to guess or piece together what it’s all about. Picking up artifacts, touching buildings (The Shroud of Turin? The Pyramids? etc). Mystery solved! That would be pretty cool. Or detectives trying to solve a crime, although the legality of such insights would be up for debate.

I recently read a book called “The Echo of Old Books,” in which the protagonist has psychometry, but only with books. She’s a used bookseller, naturally, and sometimes can get intense feelings from certain books. Joy, sadness, anger, whatever, of the person who last read that book. The point being that books can absorb these intense emotions, that some people are so attached to certain books that they leave an imprint behind on them. I think that’s a cool idea. I’d want images, too, though. Maybe it’s a little creepy, lol, but it would be neat to know who loved a particular book and why, how they felt about it, what part it played in their life. As a book lover, I feel like books are living things, breathing with not only the characters and the stories inside the covers, but also with the people who read them.

The only other thing I can think of is maybe something that belonged to a grandparent or an ancestor, and I could get a sense of their life. Memories, emotions, whether they were happy or fulfilled. We rarely know a lot about our forebears beyond our parents, at least in my case. It would be like an added tool in your genealogy research, bringing the facts you unearth to life. A window into their lives.

Anyway, that’s what I’d get out of this particular Force power. What about you? What would you want to pick up and learn about? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!