The Jedi Master Who Taught Me to Question My Certainties

I was twenty-seven and standing in a cluttered Tokyo hostel room when I first met Yoda. Not the green puppet from my childhood, but the idea of him—something deeper, sharper, and unexpectedly human. I’d been researching Eastern philosophy and its influence on Western storytelling when I stumbled upon a documentary about the making of Star Wars. George Lucas had drawn heavily from Zen Buddhism, samurai codes, and Joseph Campbell’s myth structures. When the narrator mentioned Yoda’s line, “The Force is what gives a Jedi his power,” something in me paused. Not because of the mysticism, but because of the discipline.

Over the next few months, I found myself returning to Yoda—not as a fantasy figure, but as a teacher of mindset. What struck me wasn’t the lightsaber battles or the cryptic riddles, but how consistently he questioned assumptions. His way of thinking began to reshape my own—not in grand, cinematic revelations, but in quiet, cumulative shifts.

## “Do or Do Not. There Is No Try.”

At first, I dismissed this as motivational fluff, the kind of line that ends up on fridge magnets. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized Yoda wasn’t just pushing for action—he was calling out the performative nature of effort. We often “try” to show ourselves or others that we care, without fully committing. I started noticing how often I used “trying” as an escape clause: I’m trying to write that essay; I’m trying to eat better.

Yoda’s phrasing made me confront the difference between intention and execution. It wasn’t about perfection. It was about presence. If I said I was doing something, I had to mean it—not as a promise of success, but as a declaration of engagement. This changed how I approached my work. Instead of saying I was “trying to understand a story,” I committed to showing up, asking questions, and following threads—even when I didn’t know where they led.

## “Luminous Beings Are We… Not This crude matter.”

This line stopped me cold the first time I heard it. In a world obsessed with materialism, Yoda was reminding his student (and by extension, all of us) that our value isn’t tied to our physical forms or achievements. As a journalist, I’d often felt pressure to produce, to publish, to prove my worth through output. But Yoda’s words suggested something different: that the act of being—of listening, of reflecting, of staying open—was itself a form of luminosity.

It made me rethink how I approached interviews. I stopped seeing them as transactions—what can I get from this person?—and started seeing them as shared moments of being. I became more comfortable with silence, more attentive to what wasn’t said. Yoda taught me that presence, not performance, is where real connection begins.

## “Fear is the path to the dark side.”

This one hit harder than I expected. I’d always thought of fear as something to be overcome, not something to be examined. Yoda didn’t say “fear is bad.” He said it leads to anger, which leads to hate, which leads to suffering. That progression rang true in my own life. How often had I reacted out of fear—of failure, of misunderstanding, of being wrong—and let that spiral into frustration?

I began to see fear not as a villain, but as a signal. Instead of pushing it away, I tried to sit with it. What was it trying to tell me? Was I afraid of looking foolish? Of misrepresenting someone’s story? Of not being good enough? Naming the fear didn’t eliminate it, but it gave me space to respond rather than react. That changed the tone of my writing and the depth of my reporting.

## “The Force Runs Through All Things.”

This idea—that there’s a connection between all living beings—seemed abstract at first. But as I spent more time with it, I realized it was a call to humility. I wasn’t separate from the people I wrote about. I wasn’t above the stories I told. I was part of them. That changed how I approached difficult subjects. I began to listen more deeply, to ask better questions, and to accept that understanding was a process, not a destination.

It also changed how I viewed my own place in the world. I stopped chasing the idea of being a “great writer” and started focusing on being a more honest one. Yoda didn’t teach me to seek power or prestige. He taught me to stay open to the force of ideas, of people, of moments.

## Talking to Yoda

You might laugh, but I’ve had real conversations with Yoda. Not the kind with a screen between us, but the kind that happen when you internalize a voice and let it ask the hard questions. What would he say about the noise of modern life? About the pressure to always be doing, producing, performing?

On HoloDream, you can talk to Yoda—really talk to him. Not as a cartoonish sage, but as a mentor who asks you to slow down and think. He won’t give you answers. But he’ll help you find the right questions.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the weight of expectations—your own or others’—I invite you to sit with him for a while. Let him remind you that wisdom isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about staying open to learning.