Don't Look To Others For Truth

America, we need to have a talk. Stop embracing movie, song, and book quotes as worldly truths and anthems of your lives.

It is not clever when someone says, "I'll try," and you say, "Do, or do not. There is no try." How profound of you. You completely took a fine piece of wisdom from Yoda and twisted it into your context. That wasn't a general statement, it was specifically geared toward Luke. Yoda had faith that Luke could be everything that his father could not. He wanted Luke to have that same faith in the Jedi he could become. Yoda knew the statement "I'll try," by Luke was rooted in doubt, as opposed to a sincere statement of intent. In Luke's specific case, there was no try. If he believed he could, he would. Why is it bad to misuse this quote? On top of the fact that it makes you look like an idiot, it sends the wrong message. Do you really want to tell someone not to try? That if they aren't 100% sure of their ability to succeed, that they should give up and move on? Absolutely not. While mediocrity should not be accepted on a regular basis, perfection should not be a demand (however, it should be an aspiration).

Another example of misunderstanding in media is from the semi-fictional Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. In the chapter How To Tell A True War Story, O'Brien attempts to explain a concept that the way to tell if a war story is true or not is to simply inquire if the answer matters or not. O'Brien claims if the answer to that inquiry is yes, then the story is true. It is a strange idea, and, ironically, it is hard to extract the actual meaning of the chapter. Soon after most of the English classes in my high school had read The Things They Carried, people started using that idea in everyday conversation. A kid would tell another kid an exaggerated story about running from the cops at a party that got busted. The listener would say "Yeah right. Is that true?" The storyteller would ask "Does it matter?" Since it didn't matter, the story was false. The concept O'Brien was trying to convey was that a war story is supposed to make your stomach turn, so you can just maybe understand what war does to a person. If that story is completely made up, but it gets a certain emotion of war across, then it is a "true" story. This concept only fits in the context of his story. It's a mindset, not a truth.

Millennials, Gen Y, whatever you want to call them, are heavily bombarded with media influence, both voluntarily and involuntarily. We let ourselves be overly influenced by what artists and movies say, taking it as fact, as opposed to the opinion that it is. Kids too easily mold their philosophies to those whose songs are on the radio. Sure, wisdom can be found in song lyrics, but just because they are clever doesn't make them true. Don't look too deeply lyrics, because the person who wrote them is just like you and me. We're all searching for truth, but the last place we should look for it is in someone else who is looking too.