I have always hated this line.
Yes, there is only success and failure, but “try” is the superposition that frames the attempt, demonstrating in this case how invested Luke is in the attempt. And more importantly, in many stories and real life, how many attempts will we make before giving up?
Framing it as only success and failure diminishes the determination needed to eventually succeed in the face of many failures. I get its a movie, and showing the try/fail cycle is boring and takes up too much screen time, but living by this principle in a vacuum is damaging.
I always took it more as a sermon on defeatism and belief in one’s own prowess. The quote can be misleading out of context. But if you remember the entire scene, Luke is in a very negative mood. Saying over and over that he can’t lift the X-wing, that it is impossible, what is the point, it is different from lifting small rocks, etc. Yoda is trying to shift Luke’s point of view. There’s no difference between the small feat and the large feat, only that he doesn’t believe himself capable enough to do it. Yoda instead appeals to determination. Do it, failure is not even believing in doing it in the first place—remember the quote is not “success or fail”, it is “do or do not”. Lack of confidence and faith in the force is what is holding Luke back. The quote comes as a response for Luke going “ok, I’ll try” in a completely defeated way. Suggesting he already decided he will fail. Thus Yoda’s scolding, no, don’t try, do it, full send, believe. The unspoken corollary being, if you do it and fail, then just do it again, harder and using what you learned.
After Yoda demonstrates that it was possible, after all, Luke says “I don’t believe it”, and Yoda responds “that is why you fail”. The whole point is that believing himself incapable is what is holding Luke back, you have to believe and do the thing. Else you’ll always fail. You suck at playing the violin? well, do it anyway, that’s the only way you’ll get good at playing the violin. Saying I can’t play the violin will only set you up for eternal failure and you will never do it.
It is poignant because the film actually ends in a sort of defeat. The empire seems all powerful and impossible to oppose, but they do it anyway. Afterwards Han Solo is in carbonite, Luke was severely wounded, losing an hand. Hoth is lost, cloud city betrayed them. But instead of being downtrodden and defeated, they end up hopeful and ready to do it again, to face the empire and save their friends. Because they believe in themselves and the force. It is like, the point of the movie.
I continue to draw inspiration from this scene. Even in surprising contexts.
At my work for example, where we develop software for consumers, people are very inclined to this A/B test mindset: “let’s try something and see if it tests well with users.” They act like all the answers are out there and we just need to try a million things until we discover them.
I feel differently. I think we should fixate on big things we KNOW would be valuable to our users, no matter how difficult they may be to accomplish, and COMMIT ourselves to those. If we set our best people on something it WIILL get done and we must have a mindset of MAKING it get done, not just “seeing if” it can be done.
Everyone always says “oh that’s so hard to do and we would invest a lot of effort before we could A/B test it and see if it’s valuable.” So they “try” small shit and look at the numbers, throw most of what they build away, and congratulate themselves for being “data oriented” and ”failing fast” and then they wonder why the product and business are suffering over the long term.
Try … only if the high ground you have
