Wisdom From a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars is a grab bag of practical wisdom for parents. Do you have a favorite go-to piece of bumper sticker wisdom from a galaxy far, far away?
“Do, or do not, there is no try.” – Yoda
Translation: If you want to succeed, commit! Stop holding back.
“Your focus determines your reality.” – Qui-Gon Jinn
Translation: Garbage in, garbage out. You are what you consume.
“Always with you what cannot be done.” – Yoda
Translation: Quit with the negativity already!
“You will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
Translation: Try looking at things from the perspective of others. Walk a day in someone else’s shoes.
These are all great, and total classics as far as Star Wars wisdom goes. Here’s one heavy on my mind today straight out of Return of the Jedi, some of Master Yoda’s final words before he passes away of old age in his hut on the swamp planet Dagobah.
“Pass on what you have learned,” Yoda strains on his bed, leaning toward Luke Skywalker with this one final plea from a master to his student.
This is the heart of Star Wars, and one I regret to say is the most ignored piece of George Lucas’s message to fans in these beloved movies. What is the point of being a Jedi without taking on a Padawan?
Star Wars draws on what we now know as the Hero’s Journey, wherein an ordinary boy or girl is faced with a Call to Adventure, they Refuse the Call (embracing the ordinary) and then Meet a Mentor who carries them across the threshold of doubt into a bigger existence.
“You’ve taken your first step into a larger world,” says Obi-Wan Kenobi to a young Luke Skywalker, after the young farm boy has finally answered the Call to Adventure.
We need these mentor figures. They can be parents, teachers, Scoutmasters, pastors, friends, colleagues, or just random acquaintances. The formula is clear though. Only when the hero is ready, will a mentor emerge.
The mentor passes on learned knowledge and earned wisdom from their lifetime. It saves the younger hero from a great deal of unnecessary suffering. As we all know, young people don’t always listen.
Yoda tells Luke Skywalker he won’t need weapons inside the Dark Side cave on Dagobah, implying that bringing violence inside the cave will only make the experience more violent.
Obi-Wan implores Luke not to leave his training on Dagobah to fight Darth Vader before he’s ready. Luke leaves and loses his hand.
That’s okay. This is how Padawans learn. We just hope they don’t get too badly hurt. But in what society would we want the mentors to say nothing or pretend they don’t know any better?
Sounds a lot like our society, to be honest. This weird world we live in now where the children are treated as wise despite having no wisdom. This time in which some adults won’t even give children an objective answer as to who and what they are. In Utah, there are middle school students walking out of school and circulating a petition begging the adults to enforce the dress code of the school.
Imagine that. Kids asking adults to enforce some rules. This only happens when a society has reached the point of cynicism and self-loathing that was on full display in Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, when an old and bitter Luke Skywalker receives his lost lightsaber and tosses it flippantly into the sea.
This is how civilizations are lost. Thankfully, Luke Skywalker snaps out of his malaise by the end of The Last Jedi. Yoda appears to him once more to remind Luke of what he said on his Dagobah deathbed.
“Heeded my words not, did you. Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery, but weakness, folly, failure also. Yes: failure, most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is. Luke, we are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.”
Star Wars is a story about passing down the lightsaber and the knowledge of how to use it. The mentor will also tell you what not to do with it. No one needs to find out on their own that they won’t survive staring down the barrel of a lightsaber and turning it on.
The thing about passing on learned wisdom, however, is that it takes courage. When your mentors are battered, bruised, scarred, and have faced demoralizing defeats of their own, it’s understandable that some of them will wonder, “Who am I to guide anyone? Look at what I’ve done.”
That was Obi-Wan Kenobi after the fall of Anakin Skywalker to darkness, shown in the recent Kenobi TV series. That was Luke hidden away on his island in The Last Jedi.
What mentors come to understand in their own journey is that the failures and catastrophes are precisely what make them worth listening to. If they have the wherewithal to recognize failures as such, they become qualifiers – not disqualifiers.
We only know that the sun will rise tomorrow because someone was there yesterday, and the day before that, to affirm it always shows up in the sky.
Pass on what you have learned. All of it. It’s your duty.
is the author of How The Force Can Fix The World: Lessons on Life, Liberty and Happiness from a Galaxy Far, Far Away and writes for the newsletter about pop culture and philosophy. He also is a podcast host and frequent contributor for cable and local news, talk radio, conference panels, and more.
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I am literally in an Uber to Lucasfilm for a tour at the moment this posted 😂
This is excellent. Our time has too many followers and not enough leaders. We need mentors to step in and bridge the gap for the next generation. Children may rebel against rules but they are necessary for stability. Absent rules is chaos and Freedom struggles to survive in chaos.