Feel, Don’t Think

“Concentrate on the moment, feel don’t think “

I didn’t anticipate a blog post with another reference to Star Wars but with my fervent dabbling in spirituality, I can’t help but notice seeds of Eastern philosophy in Star Wars, although George Lucas was quite candid about this in interviews, but it’s even more clear as I grow older with the original saga and prequels (something I find the latest crop of movies lack but I digress).

One particular scene from Episode 1 (1999) left a brain tattoo on me but it never really made sense to me until 2019.

Qui Gon Jinn tells Anakin Skywalker before his maiden debut with the podracer to “concentrate on the moment, feel don’t think”. In my youth, it just meant use “the Force”. Now as an adult, it has greater depth on how I witness and connect with the world before me.

“…Concentrate on the moment, feel don’t think “ — Qui Gon Jinn to a Young Anakin Skywalker

There were a number of moments over the last year that Qui Gon’s advice meant everything. Thinking is incredible but it has this equally incredible contaminated bias about the future and past, never in the moment. The future hasn’t happened and the past only controls the present if we believe it can.

It only makes sense to suspend thinking. Feel the surroundings, feel the people, and feel your moment.

Like a phalanx soldier, let thinking be a shield and sword, past and future respectively. Let emotions be the soldier, be vulnerable to the instincts to propel yourself.

Feel, don’t think… and give ’em hell.

Leonidas from 300

Word count: 247
Twitter: @bhavprajapati

52 | 250 (fifty two | two fifty), a collection of random, recurring, ruminations written with patience for depth and brevity. Each post is written over the course of a week in 250 words or less as a personal exercise of freedom and focus in a time of placid tumult and despair.