Ever since the opening crawl of Star Wars lit up my seven year-old face and blew my tiny mind I’ve been a huge fan of this amazing space opera. My love was cemented when I realised that I was a true Star Wars baby as I also shared a birth date with one of the most famous lines of the show.
One of the greatest pleasures for me (other than homemade lightsabres, and my Millenium push-bike in the 70s of course) has been sharing the experience with my two young sons and seeing them go through the same emotions that I did at a similar age. Thus, we sat down as a family this weekend to watch the latest episode “The Last Jedi” which has recently been released for home viewing.
While the Star Wars saga has delivered many memorable quotes over the years (my birth date included), they have often been burned into consciousness by repetition (hey we didnt have Netflix when I was at University!). During (only) my second viewing of The Last Jedi, one line from the new film really stood out for me.
The ghost of Master Yoda his usual wisdom found dispensing is. While talking to his old student Luke, Yoda says “We are what they grow beyond.” Those words really struck me as truly profound, in only the way that Star Wars quotes affect me.
It could just be that I was thinking of my own children and how I sincerely hope they will learn from my successes and my failures too. I hope they will grow beyond me, both in terms of one day flying the nest but also eclipsing my achievements in whatever way they desire. It was one of those lines that stayed with me beyond the film and I found myself coming back to over and over.
Later, once Id returned from the galaxy far, far away I pondered that line some more and thought about it in the context of work and my other passion, Walpole Partnership!
As an organisation were a big believer in both learning from our mistakes (and sometimes the mistakes weve seen others make), and that has been key to our development as a company. I hope we’ve been able to grow beyond, not make the same mistakes twice and deliver true value to our clients as a result.
More importantly for our customers we put a great emphasis on enabling the people we serve to grow beyond our services. We deliver a combination of transparency in our consultations and then provide educational services where we train to sustain the on-going success of our clients. In this way, we truly believe we can deliver great value but also let our clients learn from us and become ever more successful themselves. The aim is self-sufficiency for our clients.
Of course, like Master Yoda we can also always return when needed to dispense further pearls of wonderfully phrased wisdom too. Alternately, just like the Force we can be omnipresent with our new fully managed service too!
Either way, we love to let people learn from us, We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters.
Now do I have permission to hop in an X-Wing and blow something up?
“May the Fourth Be With You” is written by Walpole Partnership’s MD, Andy Pieroux.
