It’s the early 80s (or a long, long time ago in a galaxy far away), and Luke Skywalker is having a training sesh with the Jedi Master Yoda on planet Dagobah. Our hero Luke is frustrated that his T-65 X-wing is stuck in the swampy mess of an uncharted planet.
When confronted with the task of the force, Luke admits that he will try. Yoda, in his infinite wisdom, exclaims, “NO! Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”
And then you need to watch the movie to see what happens next, obviously.
But from the moment those words were exhaled through Yoda’s vocal chords, they rang not only through Luke’s ears, but spilled into the realm of reality. Stamped across motivational posters, printed on saavy t-shirts, and tweeted by thousands, Yoda’s words spell out a philosophical certainty 30 years in the making.
But what if he was wrong?
Yoda frolicked around the Star Wars world as a Master Jedi until the ripe approximate age of 900. So we can assume he knew a little bit about life.
Yet, all great philosophies must be questioned. Even the ones as simple as “do or do not.”
If we break it down, Yoda is essentially saying you either accomplish something, or you don’t, and if you aren’t going to accomplish something, then there is no point in trying.
So, we got two things going on here. The positive connotation: absolutely 100 percent achieve something without failure. The negative connotation: absolutely 100 percent do not do something whether or not there is a chance of failure.
The negative connotation is a tad overwhelming and a little bit depressing.
So here’s my question. Why not try something, even if there is a slight chance of failure? Or massive chance of failure? Or even if you know you are going to fail? Don’t we learn more from trying than doing nothing at all?
Yoda believes you either do it, or you don’t. Simple as that. But he is not human, and we are… so, ya know, we humans err on the side of uncertainty. We humans feed off failure. That is how we improve.
If we actually did listen to Yoda, there would be so many things left untouched. Forgotten. Undone. Failure would keep us from trying. J.K. Rowling would have never published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone because if she would have known how many times she was going to fail, she wouldn’t have sent the manuscript to any publishing companies.
I mean, eventually she “did.” But at the cost of trying. And then she made millions. And then people started mixing up Yoda with Dumbledore, as this Google search I typed resulted:
If we want something, we should go for it anyway, even at all cost of failure. If we don’t get it the first time, we try again. We don’t just “do not.”
Well, maybe some people choose to opt for Yoda’s “do not.” But not you. Not Luke Skywalker; he knew what was up.
See, Yoda was a smart guy. When he says “do or do not, there is no try,” maybe he’s actually saying accomplish whatever you set out to do, because the option of not doing something really isn’t an option at all. He’s an ironic little fellow.
But we still got to try, regardless of Yoda’s backwards grammar.
So, when faced when the possibility of accomplishing something, there is more than just “do or do not.” Maybe we should really be telling ourselves: “Try until you do.” **
Michelle Hand
** I can’t guarantee that this new quote will ever become as famous as Yoda’s spoken words. But hey, they are making a new Star Wars movie so maybe I can ask them to squeeze “Try until you do” into the script somewhere.
Murmurations Magazine 