The Wisdom of Qui-Gon

At a staff meeting the other day, the director of the agency I work for bestowed upon us workers some words of wisdom he got from his dreams. Some may have been cribbed from other places too. I wasn't quite sure. (His explanation was confusing and vague).

In any case, one of them was a long, only somewhat coherent rambling aphorism.

It took me a few seconds to tease out what he was trying to say, but when I did, I turned to a co-worker who is also a Star Wars fan, and said, "Did he just basically say, 'Your focus determines your reality?'" (Qui-Gon Jinn to Anakin Skywalker on a Coruscant landing platform, The Phantom Menace).

My co-worker started laughing. "That's exactly what he said."

Maybe next time he'll tell us that sometimes when you get scared, it can make you mad. And when you're mad, you can really start disliking other people. And disliking others leads to people getting hurt.*

*Yoda, also in The Phantom Menace: "Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."