Resentment or Regret
- Shawn A. Stack
- May 4
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Notes on Being #01
On a day when everyone is quoting Yoda, it’s worth remembering—he wasn’t talking about effort.
He was talking about responsibility.
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Probably the sagest advice ever spoken by a puppet.
If you grew up with Star Wars, you know the moment. Yoda says this to Luke Skywalker as he struggles to lift his X-Wing from the swamp on Dagobah.
Luke says he’ll try.
He fails.
The ship sinks deeper into the mire.
Frustrated, he gives up: “You ask the impossible.”
And then, when Luke walks away, Yoda lifts the ship effortlessly from the swamp and places it on solid ground.
Luke returns, stunned: “I don’t believe it.”
And Yoda responds, almost sadly:
“That is why you fail.”
It’s a pivotal moment in the story.
And, in many ways, in life.
What Yoda is pointing to echoes something William James described as The Will to Believe.
Put simply:
If I believe I can make the jump, I will jump.
If I do not believe I can, I won’t.
In this way, belief does not guarantee the outcome—
but it determines whether the attempt ever happens.
This is where things become complicated.
Because we live inside a tension:
Free will
and
determinism
On one hand, the world appears structured, ordered, even pre-determined.
On the other, we experience ourselves as choosing.
And we have to experience it this way.
Because without choice, there is no responsibility.
Without responsibility, there is no morality.
And without morality, we lose something essential to being human: purpose.
Purpose is experienced through responsibility.
It is the feeling that something is being asked of you.
But here is where the idea sharpens:
Purpose is not something you discover.
It is something you take responsibility for.
And responsibility does not ask whether you feel ready.
It rarely aligns with your current skills, your current resources, or your current confidence.
In fact, it often exposes the gap between who you are and what is required.
This is where most people stop.
Not because they cannot act—
but because they do not believe they can.
And so they “try.”
Which is to say:
they hesitate
they negotiate
they remain partially committed
They stay at the edge of the swamp.
To “do” is different.
It is not certainty.
It is not guaranteed success.
It is simply this:
movement despite uncertainty.
And to be clear—
this does not mean everything is within your control.
It isn’t.
Two people can make the same decision and arrive at very different outcomes. Timing, circumstance, and chance all play their part.
But your response still belongs to you.
You cannot control what others think of you.
But you can control how you relate to that thought.
You cannot instantly become the person you imagine.
But you can act in ways that move you in that direction.
You cannot escape expectations.
But you can decide which ones you will carry.
Most people encounter this in quiet moments:
When they stay in the job they didn’t choose.
When they avoid the conversation they know they need to have.
When they defer something—not because they can’t act, but because they don’t fully believe they should.
This is the real tension.
Not between success and failure—
but between action and avoidance.
Hustle culture has taken Yoda’s words and repurposed them.
It tells you that if you are not doing, you are failing.
That your value is measured in output.
That more effort, more discipline, more production will resolve the tension.
But this is not Yoda’s lesson.
It is the same logic—reversed.
Where Material Salvationism says: acquire more to become more,
hustle culture says: produce more to become more.
Different direction.
Same error.
Because this was never about doing more.
It was about choosing what to take responsibility for.
Because you will choose.
Even if you believe you are not choosing.
Even if you are told the choice has already been made.
Even if you delay it.
And here is the part that people resist:
Every choice closes off another life.
Every path excludes another possibility.
There is no version of your life where this is not true.
Which means this:
You will regret something.
Not because you chose poorly—
but because choosing, by its nature, excludes.
So the question is not how to avoid regret.
It is how to orient yourself toward it.
You have a choice.
You can:
Resent the life that was chosen for you—
or
Regret the life you chose.
One is passive.
The other is authored.
“Do or do not.
There is no try.”
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