Do, or do not.

Over time I've come to terms with the fact that I kind of don't look at the world the same way most people do. Back in grade school, there was a question on a test that asked "What do you need to bake a cake?", and I answered "A Birthday". The answer was sadly marked incorrect.

People make strange remarks towards me, from time to time. They're not strange in the sense that they're remarks normal people wouldn't ordinarily make, but more in the sense that they don't make any particular sense given the way my brain works.

Like, someone might say "You biked up a 4000 foot climb? That must have been very difficult." or "I don't get how you can understand all that math, it's really hard".

The fundamental problem is that I let go of the whole concept of "hard" or "difficult" a long time ago. When people say something is hard, all they're really doing is giving themselves an excuse to fail without feeling too bad about it. "It's OK if I give up, because it's hard".

That shit doesn't fly with me.

I don't put tasks into buckets labeled "hard" and "easy". For me, there is only "things I've already demonstrated, either directly or indirectly, that I'm capable of" and "things I have not yet successfully managed to do".

Much like what the title of this post alludes to, when Yoda told Luke "do, or do not, there is no try", he wasn't trying to be deep and metaphorical. He was trying to tell Luke that he was being a whiny shit and just making excuses for not wanting to succeed at doing what he was fully capable of doing.

I think it probably makes the most sense in hindsight. When you look back on a "hard" task, after having completed it, what are you left with? You are still intact as a person, essentially the same as before you started, and you have gained a completed task. What sense does it then make to categorize it as "hard"?

In short: stop giving yourself excuses to fail.