I believe that the central question of this film is; “What do we miss in the process of striving?”

Where as many of Pixar’s movies tend to focus on letting go of relationships and connections; toy story, Good Dinosaur, Up...etc, Soul sets it’s store in a different narrative. Discovering and holding on to life. 

Much could be written about the superb casting and incredible score...(honestly go listen to the original sound track!) From the outset you are led to believe, and obviously so, that this is a story about Joe, a grown man discovering something about life.

Yet as the movie develops what we discover is that the protagonist starts seeing the world, not through his own eyes but that of his inner child as mirrored by his travelling companion “22”. 

With wonder and excitement and with daring and newness, with attention to the small things and a gratitude for them, together they begin to see the world for the first time. For Joe this is about seeing what was already there but hidden from his view and for 22, this is about seeing that there is something worth getting living for.

22 is a soul with nowhere to go and no one to help him navigate his journey to inhabit a new body and Joe takes on this role as teacher and mentor. Through their relationship, and 22’s child like eyes, we, along with Joe realise that it was the voices of adults around us as we grew up that forced us to conform to the norms of life, squashing any desire to dream and live but to focus only on purpose and mission.

So often we can feel that our job in life is to find our purpose, our reason for being. 

I have written and spoken many times on the Japanese idea of ikigai, yet this film demands that we start by seeing the life that we have as one to live, rather than through the eyes of someone who has adapted to the conforming voices that surround them as a child. We are challenged to see through the eyes of a child who has yet to be told what they should do, what they could do, and more importantly what they can’t.

The idea and narrative of not being good enough permeates this movie. Of all the messages we receive from the experiences we have, the ones that automatically grow roots in our mind are the negative ones, leading us to believe only negative about ourselves and our potential. 

The reason that we can rarely feel good enough for anything is often because we are trying to live up to the expectations of adults that were around us as we grew. These can be either perceived beliefs or words that were actually spoken over us as a child, or even what we perceive to be good enough in the here and now. So we strive, we look for improvements, we find ourselves demanding that we should be better and if we just work harder and longer then we may get a promotion, be further on in our career and its only those moments that help us to even feel that we could, maybe, potentially, be good enough. Perhaps it’s about being parents, partners, friends. Maybe we want to start selling those t-shirt designs we have been working on or start a community project or even a podcast!

Whatever it is, by putting ourselves out there we start to to build a case against why we shouldn’t bother. Ironically it is in that searching for what our “thing” is that we start comparing ourselves to others. As we search we notice and what we notice becomes all that we are looking for, people who are further on, people who are “better“. The higher wage the bigger house the faster car. The entrepreneur, the creative, the “doer”. Our negative self belief is reinforced by our focus on those ahead of us.

What if we could take away that social normative narrative that invades our brain changes our thinking and demands our behaviour be something that we are not.

Letting go and seeing the world through the eyes of a child shifts our focus. It takes us away from purpose or project or being the next big thing, a very grown-up and adult construct, and focuses on living in the moment. Enjoying the now. Taking away the pressure of what the future will be and will bring enables us to simply enjoy the life and moment that we have.

In having a very fixed mindset like this we dismiss the thought of playful experience as fanciful. We ask ourselves; “how will I develop myself or start a project or be better at something if I am not constantly striving and pushing to be the best”.  This black and white thinking is what stops us doing anything. We think it’s either 100% push or 100% being some kind of hippy communing with nature, wild swimming and meditating. 

We start to believe that we have to scrap one to do the other but I don’t believe this to be true. Sometimes and so often we do so much of what we do because of should and aught that what we miss is the simple opportunity of living.

By insisting that life was about one thing, one purpose, and that 22 can’t find her own, he presented negative reinforcement of what she should be. Joe did not intentionally go out of his way to reinforce the negative thinking, in fact he was starting to like her as a mentor likes their student. But as with many adults before him, Joe is forced to become aware of the dangers of negative reinforcement, and squashing the young mind’s spirit.

22 gives into the cynicism of every harsh word she’s heard over the centuries and millennia from mentors. When Joe enters the “dark void” she’s created he sees all the cruel things 22’s other mentors have said to her, but none is quite so monstrous as her vision of Joe: an enormous towering figure she imagines is screaming down at her, insisting she has no reason to live or exist. Perhaps the importance of his voice is because it was the last one she heard or because, for the first time she had mad a connection with someone that allowed her to explore her unique spark.

As we start to notice the small things in our life the connections, small wins, passion and experience and approach those things with a sense of gratitude we become more ourselves and less what we believe others want us to be. In becoming more ourselves we have freedom to start to ask the questions; “how do we want to live?” & “What do we want to define us?” 

We move from what we think we should be, towards a more healthy what do we want to be. A good friend Pip Wilson often says that we are human beings not human doings. Yet so often we become caught up in what we do that we miss who we actually are. 

Two things I take from this. 

Firstly as we approach a new thing let’s start by removing those rules set in place by others and time and with this new found freedom we can start to explore who we want to be and come at it free from the constraints of having to be something or someone we are not. 

Secondly how we talk to our children is important. Providing space for them to explore the world to find their own voice is essential. 

Remember, there are no limits apart from the ones we allow to have in our own mind, nothing to stop us reaching for any level but the most important thing is that when we do we are doing so from a point of knowing that what we want not what the world, ourselves or our inner critic are demanding from us. 

It is in that space we find a place of play, fun and joy then, we simply take steps in discovering what that will be is. One foot in front of the other.

Joe is asked…. “So what do you think you’ll do? How will you spend your life?”

His answer…. “I’m not sure. But I do know….I’m going to live every minute of it.”