Unless you’ve hidden under a rock for the last 40 years, you probably know who Yoda is. In the Star Wars universe, Yoda is a Jedi master, full of wisdom, knowledge and truth.
He’s held up as the epitome of all that is good, kind, benevolent and wonderful. In the fictional reality of Star Wars, there’s a place for the perfect, the un-blemished, the all-knowing.
Yet I’m here to tell you that sometimes, Yoda got it wrong – dead wrong!
Because he failed to see the potential for Anakin Skywalker to go completely off the rails, killing without mercy and destroying the Jedi as a force for good. He failed to identify Palpatine as a Sith Lord, until the evidence was so powerful everyone could see it.
And worst of all, Yoda sometimes taught concepts that have caused pain and suffering to people in our world.
Because he once taught, “Do, or do not, there is no try”.
Which is total garbage, yet I can’t tell you the number of times that people have quoted that to me in a business setting, or in an attempt to be ‘motivational’. In the real world, trying is how we get to doing, but in the middle there may be a lot of trying and failing, before you eventually get to doing.
It’s not that the principle of what he was trying to communicate was wrong, rather that the application of that truth needs to be specified, and Yoda didn’t do it.
And people have doubled down on that, believing that there was no such thing as trying, only achieving. So when things went wrong after they tried, they believed that they were somehow doing something wrong, and they stopped trying, when in reality the trying WAS the way to get to doing/achieving, but there was going to be a lot of ‘not achieving’ along the way.
As good as he was, as profound as he could be, Yoda was still trying his best, and sometimes screwing it up.
Which IS how it works in the real world. In my work as a Coach, I’ve been privileged to help people in ways that have made their lives immeasurably better, and yet I’m one of the most flawed people I know.
In turn, I have been helped by people who have bequeathed unto me their knowledge, their wisdom, and their kindness, and yet if I examine their lives closely, I can see that areas in which they struggle, and fail.
And yet they still have incredible value to give to the world.
The teachers among us are always going to have their flaws, their weaknesses, their issues and their failings. They will still struggle to find their way, and live their path, in just the same ways that we will.
They may be further along on their journey, but they, like you and I, are still trying to walk a pathway day after day wherein they try to balance self with the world, principle with pragmatism and survival with compassion.
Those are they who are daily trying, and sometimes not ‘doing’.
And they have lessons to teach.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings