Yoda, Honesty and the Weight of Wisdom
This article is based on Episode 1 of the Chatty Geek, Hidden Dragon podcast. Listen to the episode here:
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Yoda, Honesty and the Weight of Wisdom
What happens when the person everyone turns to for wisdom no longer has the answers?
For the first full episode of Chatty Geek, Hidden Dragon, I brought Yoda into the counselling room.
The idea behind CGHD is simple: take characters and stories we already care about, borrow a counselling lens, and see what becomes interesting when we approach them with curiosity rather than certainty.
Yoda felt like a fitting place to start.
He is one of the most recognisable wise figures in popular culture: an ancient Jedi Master, teacher, leader, contemplative figure and, when necessary, surprisingly energetic warrior. Yet the more interesting Yoda becomes, the less useful it is to treat him as an infallible guru.
Wisdom does not make him immune to grief, uncertainty, responsibility or failure.
And that raises a very human question.
Where does the wise person go when they need help?
Imagine Yoda shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith.
The Jedi Order has been devastated. The Republic has fallen. Palpatine has revealed himself as Darth Sidious and established the Empire. Anakin Skywalker has become Darth Vader. Yoda has confronted Sidious and failed to defeat him, and he has withdrawn into exile on Dagobah.
Almost everything that gave his life structure has changed.
He has lost colleagues, students, friends, his home, his institution and the world in which his role made sense.
For centuries, Yoda has been one of the people others turn towards.
He teaches. He advises. He leads.
Even experienced Jedi Masters look to him for perspective.
But what happens when the person with the answers reaches a point where there is no clear answer?
That situation is not particularly alien at all.
Parents, teachers, managers, counsellors, carers, doctors, community leaders and martial-arts instructors can all become accustomed to being the person expected to remain calm, capable and reassuring.
Over time, a role can become so familiar that saying “I don’t know,” “I’m frightened,” or “I need help with this” starts to feel strangely difficult.
Yoda’s public identity is almost entirely organised around being wise.
A counselling room might offer something unusual: a place where he does not have to be Grand Master Yoda.
He can simply be Yoda.
Grief without turning it into failure
Yoda’s situation also raises interesting questions about grief.
The Jedi tradition repeatedly warns against attachment, and Yoda himself encourages Anakin to learn to let go of what he fears losing.
But now Yoda has experienced extraordinary loss himself.
That does not mean non-attachment is the same as not caring, and it would be unfair to assume that Yoda sees it that way. The more interesting question is how those teachings sit alongside his own experience.
Does he give himself permission to grieve?
Does part of him judge certain feelings as somehow un-Jedi?
Can sadness, anger, responsibility and acceptance exist together?
A counselling relationship does not need to force those questions towards a tidy conclusion.
Perhaps Yoda would feel sorrow for the Jedi who were killed. Perhaps there would be anger towards Sidious, regret about decisions made by the Council, guilt about surviving, or questions about whether he should have seen the danger sooner.
He might even experience relief.
Relief that the immediate battle is over. Relief that he is no longer sitting at the centre of an institution expected to solve an increasingly impossible crisis.
Contradictory feelings do not necessarily cancel one another out.
Grief can exist alongside relief. Accountability can exist alongside compassion. Regret does not require someone to accept responsibility for everything that happened.
That distinction could be particularly important for Yoda.
He may have responsibility for decisions made within the Jedi Order without being responsible for Sidious’s entire plan.
Exploring what belonged within his influence, what he regrets and what was beyond his control could be more useful than deciding whether he was simply a success or a failure.
Who are we when the role disappears?
There is another loss here too: structure.
For centuries, Yoda’s life has been shaped by teaching, training, Council meetings, responsibility and belonging.
Dagobah removes almost all of that.
No Temple. No Council. No generations of young Jedi arriving for guidance.
Who is Yoda when nobody needs him to be Grand Master?
That question reaches far beyond Star Wars.
Retirement, redundancy, bereavement, illness, children leaving home, the end of a relationship or a major career change can all disrupt the roles through which we recognise ourselves.
The role may have been genuine and deeply meaningful. But if it has occupied most of the available space, losing it can leave an uncomfortable question behind:
Who am I without this?
Yoda’s exile eventually becomes part of something meaningful. We know he will later train Luke Skywalker.
But Yoda, at the beginning of exile, does not necessarily know what his future is going to become.
Counselling would not need to hurry him towards an inspirational lesson.
Sometimes meaning comes later.
Sometimes the first thing a person needs is enough room to acknowledge:
This mattered.
This hurt.
I did not want this to happen.
Honesty, transparency and the pressure to look competent
The counselling lens I chose for this first episode was honesty and transparency.
They sound simple, but they reach into almost every part of a counselling relationship.
BACP’s 2026 Ethical Framework identifies both as ethical principles. Honesty involves truthfulness, while transparency includes helping people understand what service is being offered, who is providing it, the practitioner’s qualifications and other information relevant to informed choices.
For me, the practical message is straightforward:
Do not pretend to know what you do not know.
That would matter enormously if Yoda were sitting opposite me.
I have not lived for hundreds of years. I cannot sense the Force. I have never led a Jedi Order, survived Order 66 or fought Darth Sidious in the Senate chamber.
Strangely enough, none of those appeared on my counselling diploma.
But empathy does not require pretending that another person’s experience is already understood.
Sometimes one of the more respectful things a counsellor can say is:
“I may not have understood that properly. Can you help me understand what it is like for you?”
There can be pressure in helping professions to demonstrate understanding quickly.
But appearing confident is not the same as understanding.
If I fill the gaps in Yoda’s story with my own assumptions, I risk replacing his experience with my version of it.
Not knowing can therefore be useful.
I can listen. Ask. Check. Be corrected.
Yoda remains the expert on what his own life means to him.
Wisdom does not require perfection
There is another complication.
I admire Yoda.
That matters.
If a counsellor idealises someone, it can affect the relationship just as much as strongly disliking them. I might become reluctant to challenge him, seek his approval, or become more interested in meeting a fictional hero than paying attention to the work he actually wants to do.
The answer is not pretending those reactions do not exist.
It is noticing them.
Reflecting on them.
Taking them to supervision where appropriate.
Honesty and transparency require some tolerance for imperfection from the counsellor too.
If I misunderstand something, I can acknowledge it.
If something I say lands badly, good intentions do not erase the impact.
If I am outside my professional competence, I need to recognise that honestly rather than hiding behind a polished professional identity.
That creates an interesting parallel with Yoda.
He may need a space where he is no longer required to perform flawless wisdom.
And the counsellor needs to resist performing flawless counselling.
Neither person has to win the wisdom competition.
The person underneath the title
The idea I keep returning to from this episode is that wisdom does not make relationship unnecessary.
Yoda could meditate. Reflect. Draw on centuries of experience and an extraordinary relationship with the Force.
None of that means he has to process loss alone.
The value of counselling would not be that the counsellor somehow knows more than Yoda.
It would be that, for a while, he does not have to be the teacher.
He does not have to produce an answer.
He can be a person before being the role.
And perhaps that is worth carrying outside the fictional counselling room too.
Where in your own life do you feel pressure to have the answers?
And what might become possible if, occasionally, you were allowed to be a person before being the role?
This article is based on Episode 1 of Chatty Geek, Hidden Dragon: Yoda, Honesty and the Weight of Wisdom. Listen to the full episode to hear the complete discussion, including Yoda’s imaginary visit to the counselling room, the counselling lens of honesty and transparency, and a few considerably less serious questions about Jedi mind tricks and Force-assisted furniture rearrangement.