“A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? On What he was doing.”

— Grand Master Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars is one of my favorite Film series of all time, the action is great, the effects are cool, the concept in general is very appealing, but what makes Star Wars such an enthralling series to me is the mystique. The ever evolving mystique of Star Wars is what kept me coming back for more, the mysteries of “The Force”, the stoicism of the Jedi, the deep power of “The Dark Side”, these things gave the Star Wars universe a sense of awe and mystery. Yes, there was a galactic war, yes there was a plot about resisting oppressive power structures, there were space battles and all the basic things needed for an action/adventure film, but beneath all of that was a philosophy, a philosophy that carried the protagonists in every film.

The way I view the Jedi in Star wars, from a writers point of view, is through the main character, Luke Skywalker, the original protagonist of the original trilogy, he is a typical well written hero. He was talented, he excelled for reasons unknown to him and he always felt a sense of wanting more, a sense that he was “Destined for something”. He was a simple farm boy but throughout the lore of the Star Wars universe we learn that Luke is inherently powerful due to his bloodline, but the part that makes him well written is that he is not overly powerful at the start. You get to see Luke grow and he grows mostly by using the philosophy of the Jedi, this mysterious order from the past, of which only their mystifying legends and tales of the force are left behind for the galaxy to wonder about. Luke starts off as not all that great of a Force user even though he was naturally gifted, he still needed to hone his power, he still needed it to be refined by Obi-Wan Kenobi, a remnant Jedi Master who finds Luke. Luke even needed the philosophical teachings of Yoda the remnant Grand Master of the Jedi who is in hiding, remaining in isolation on a distant planet to stay away from the grasp of the Empire. Luke needed these wise and proven Masters of “The Force” to unlock his true potential. Luke’s story to me is the story of us all, we all have potential but we need to unlock it somehow and often times it is those who come before us that help us do that.

Furthermore, from my point of view the Jedi order was inserted into the story as a vehicle for Luke to unlock his power. These characters are not simply powerful on their own, they needed some sort of teaching, a way , a path and the Jedi provided that way, that path, for the protagonist of the Star Wars films to grow and master. The Jedi existed to maintain balance and they did that by training people who were “force sensitive” (people with an innate ability to control the force) to wield the force internally, to forget their personal desires and be one with the force, to not look for glory, to not look to the horizon, to focus on the now. These people with innate force power were already special but the catch was, and why you needed the Jedi training was, without this sort of training, force sensitive types like Luke Skywalker, could lose themselves to the Dark side. The Jedi Order was much more a psychological, and philosophical order than an order of force and power, they had strength in combat but were much more keepers of the peace than warriors until of course they needed to be warriors, but that was not their purpose. They were written into the original trilogy to give Luke something, some group, to look to, to unlock his potential. The Jedi existed originally (writing wise) to give Luke teachers, people who have knowledge and skills he could not possibly obtain on his own, they gave him something to aspire to.

Master Yoda in particular uses philosophy to teach Luke how to escape himself and be in the present, to get away from focusing on what could be and pay attention to what he is doing presently. In a pivotal scene of the transition Luke takes from scarcely trained to starting to become a full fledged Jedi Knight, Yoda is speaking with the ghost of Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan is trying to convince Yoda to train Luke, but is being stubborn and finding many reason to not train Luke. During the sequence of Obi-Wan and Luke trying to convince Yoda, The Jedi Grand-Master turns to Luke and addresses his incessant need to be in his head, his need to use his imagination, to escape reality, to look to the future. Yoda addresses this by saying to Luke, “A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one (Luke) a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away…to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? On What he was doing.”. This very Stoic lesson he just dropped on Luke resonated with me, it made Yoda and the Jedi more than some group of powerful beings that could wield the force and protect the galaxy, they were more than just a bad-ass group of warriors, they were a philosophical order, an order that taught their students to escape their own imagination and become something greater, to focus, to believe that what was happening now was most important. This type of thing helped me identify with Luke on a deeper level.

For me recently, my Master Yoda, and my Obi-Wan were also two figures from the distant past, two masters of their own order of philosophy, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca The Younger. The hardest part for me usually is that “the moment”, is usually not where I want to be at all , I find it easy to live in the moment when I am having fun, doing something I enjoy, and/or I am with a person or people I love to be around. However, during the typical mundane “present” or “now” it’s usually boring and not where I would like to be presently, the more I stay in it , the less happy I become with my present situation, then I start thinking about what I can do to improve it and alas I am looking to the horizon and not focusing on the now, not focusing on what I am doing.

It is a struggle, to not look to the horizon but I find the best way to live in the present is to stay active, do things that help improve me, challenge myself and set goals so that while in my present state I can be doing something for myself. The biggest enemy to this is laziness, you have to beat laziness and your own wandering mind constantly. This also becomes hard when you work a boring job and afterwards you have very low energy to do anything besides eat, relax then sleep. However, that is the challenge to defeat laziness and come up with the energy to make the most of your present.

Yoda tries to instill that in Luke , he tells him that he is not ready, he is not trainable because he is not focused, he is not in the moment, he is off somewhere else, escaping reality. Yoda will not train Luke until he finds out how to curb his need to escape reality and instead escape his own imagination. Luke is like all of us in our daily lives, we cannot even begin to help ourselves, we cannot even begin to be trained by reading books on stoicism, The Tao, or mastering the inner-self , if we cannot escape our own imagination, and apply those teachings during the gauntlet that is the present, the now, the REAL life.

We can say we love the teachings of the old masters and that we “try” to apply them but we can’t truly apply them by trying, we must do, like Master Yoda said once “Do or do not, there is no try“, this quote seems silly at first but if you really think about it, it does not mean to not try, it means do not go into something to better yourself or to achieve something without being serious about it. A lot of people half-ass things, and say, “oh well I tried”, I mean sure you tried but did you really go all in? Did you really give it your all!? It’s better to fail while going for it all, rather than fail without putting your best foot forward. The quote, “Do or do not, there is no try”, to me means, if you are going to do something like compete, finish a goal or improve yourself, do it with all intentions of getting something done, or don’t do it at all. Yes, you will fail, and fail often, but you must PERSIST. If you do everything to the best of your ability at the moment, you can have no regrets, you can be satisfied with your work, and if you are persistent your hard work will surely pay off!

Thank you for reading, I just wanted to give a look at Star Wars from maybe an angle that you rarely see it in, an angle of philosophy and expose some of the underlying themes that make the Star Wars universe so interesting to me. I know I could be completely over analyzing the film and it’s meaning but that is part of the fun of films, you can take it how you choose to, it’s art, it’s not supposed to be a universal experience, art just has to make you feel something and if you can take something unique from it, it makes it that much more special. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed this blog post, there is more to come!

Written by: Marcos Lopez, 1/15/2020