Michael spent just over a year being entirely self driven for the first time ever in her life, after being flung to a time and universe that had become entirely foreign to her. She was free of the Vulcan science academy and its noble attempts at logic dogmas, free of the struggle between Sarek and Amanda’s often clashing cultures however abiding their love, free of Starfleet regimentation even given its upright philosophies, free of being entirely defined and controlled by past personal mistakes and trauma and, lastly, independent of a found family she loved and cherished beyond expression but in whom she had utmost faith to survive with or without her. All the while, she spent this year admiring and becoming very close to another person exactly as self driven and independent as she hoped\wanted\felt herself becoming since entering this time.
Nonetheless and for a multitude of reasons, she still needed to find again her chosen family on Discovery, and secondarily her biological family if possible, namely her mother. Atop all this, once she knew about the Burn and what it had done to the Federation in the over 900 years since she left it, I am quite certain one of the most glaring, salient, driving forces in her psyche from that moment onward has been something like this:
‘I did not mutiny, lead to my Captain’s tragic death, mistakenly help instigate an absolutely devastating war that nearly wiped out the Federation the first time around, help find a way out of the seemingly unwinnable war just at the brink AND still manage to find a way of saving all life in the universe, including the Federation’s, with my mother’s help who I thought long ago dead and gone…only to have said universe and Federation become even more disconnected, brought back to near zero geopolitically and even more bereft of the hope that I and my crew had fought so hard to preserve.’
Therefore, upon their reunion in Unification III Gabrielle Burnham spoke the Truth as mothers tend to given that she undeniably saw what we and Michael herself were only just now coming to ascertain. By the time Michael reunited with Discovery not too long ago, she had wanted 2 things as intensely and simultaneously as the other. She yearned for her own life and own way of being as she realized she finally could have during the year she was separated from everyone and everything she had ever known beforehand, yet also and still she wished with every fiber of her being to embody the ideals that her biological family, her adopted Vulcan family and finally the Federation had instilled in her every step of the way in her life previous, despite all the heartache and pain that had come with. That ideal can be summed up entirely by such a maxim: to try our best to leave the universe in a better place than we found it. In the hearts and minds of myself, of Michael, very clearly, and anyone who decides to honestly and compassionately live by the codes and ideals of the United Federation of Planets, we feel compelled to hold to and further this one ideal above all else no matter how seemingly small our acts or gestures, and even amidst all the many honest and emotional mistakes we make along the way. We still strive to learn from those mistakes and continue to act towards becoming a better version of ourselves and encourage other life to try for the same.
Lofty ambitions acknowledged, Michael will probably never feel entirely free of past sins and those more dire mistakes for which she has so long felt she has to atone. Who amongst us with compassion and love for life would not feel the same somewhere deep down in our own souls? But…this recognition of her mistakes need not be the single tragic, punitive Truth defining her entire life thereafter. Gabrielle ultimately came to know this. Amanda came to know this. Even Phillipa has come to know this, both Phillipas in fact. And perhaps – now – Michael can know this real and more compassionate Truth for herself rather than only those smaller Truths of past actions to which she had felt chained for so long. The Truth being that there are greater things to strive for in this universe, there have always been, and Michael sees more clearly day by day what the Federation, as much as her friends and family, mean to her in accomplishing those greater things.
In this way, Unification of the soul will come.
However, this only is as much as any one person can ask and work towards before any greater Unification – between souls or cultures or, indeed, peoples – can truly begin.
Saint John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul (From Spanish)
(Excerpt)
By St. John of the Cross
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Once in the dark of night,
Inflamed with love and yearning, I arose
(O coming of delight!)
And went, as no one knows,
When all my house lay long in deep repose
All in the dark went right,
Down secret steps, disguised in other clothes,
(O coming of delight!)
In dark when no one knows,
When all my house lay long in deep repose.
And in the luck of night
In secret places where no other spied
I went without my sight
Without a light to guide
Except the heart that lit me from inside.
It guided me and shone
Surer than noonday sunlight over me,
And led me to the one
Whom only I could see
Deep in a place where only we could be.
…..
Eclogue of Five Worlds 