Can anyone be a Jedi?

This is a topic that has been cycling around the internet recently. In the show "Ahsoka" which just finished airing on Disney+, one of the characters becomes a Jedi after having shown no force sensitivity at all during this character's existence. In this post, I'm going to explore how the force works, and if anyone in the Star Wars galaxy could become the next Darth Vader.

Outside of the Star Wars Galaxy, the creator of Star Wars himself, George Lucas has weighed in on this conversation. Lucas said "Everyone has the force in them, there's two sides to that. There's the dark side, which is selfishness, and the light side which is compassion."

It has been described in Star Wars that natural-born talent is a factor, Anakin Skywalker is a prime example of this. Progression in the force was never something that took time for him. However most Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi for example, spent many years training to be decent at wielding the force.

For the vast majority of people in the Star Wars Galaxy, becoming a Jedi is a nearly impossible feat. For a real-world comparison think of it as becoming a grand-master in multiple forms of martial arts. Most people don't have the time or patience to master these skills in regular day-to-day life. Why would the common people in a galaxy far, far away want to be Jedi?

Also depending on the time period, the Jedi wouldn't take just anyone. During the Era of the Republic, if you were older than a toddler, you were considered "too old" due to the attachments you've formed with your family.

I could do a whole blog post on attachment, but the Jedi rejected any form of attachment because they feared it would lead to giving into negative emotions when loss inevitability happens.

So between the Jedi not wanting to risk taking just anybody, and the long and rigorous training required to master the force, Dark Lords like Darth Vader were certainly a rare sight.