The Life Philosophy Behind The Spiritual Journey

The day before yesterday, I went to see the recently hit Disney movie "Soul" by myself.

Although I don't understand why the movie is not literally translated as "soul", but the words "spiritual journey" are used, but I found that this translation is actually much more clever than the literal translation.

This movie obviously managed to capture a lot of my tears, and I'm glad that I went to the movie alone to be able to release my emotions unscrupulously in the dark environment. When I came home after watching it that night, I did not choose to take a taxi, but strolled along the almost deserted street, looking at the dim lights on the street, while thinking about the pictures and lines of the movie.

Pixar's "Soul" presents a much more mature theme than any past Disney or Pixar film. The film straddles the line between children and adults in favor of 100-minute animations infused with philosophical themes of life, death, dreams, life, and more—

Why am I being me?

Why do I exist in this world?

What is the purpose and meaning of life?

When dreams come true, will life become boring?

...

(1)

Stories of Midlife Crisis

Animated form aside, I've been thinking about what Pixar seems to be telling a story about a midlife crisis.

The first few minutes of the film are filled with colorful descriptions of New York street life: hoarse car horns, throngs of people crashing into each other, slices of pizza, barbershops, subway platforms and pedestrians, carts, yellow taxis, etc. hustle and bustle.

The protagonist Joe Joe, a jazz musician like his late father, a single African-American, is at a crossroads. His belly and grey beard might have guessed that he was entering middle age, but his crazy obsession with jazz still believed that he could one day be a great musician in the spotlight. The reality is that this man can only earn a living by teaching music to middle school students every day.

Until one day, when the principal excitedly told him, "Job security. Medicare. Pensions. Welcome, Joe!" He recognized that these were all good things, and he was grateful for the opportunity, but he was also disappointed because he The "spark" that really lit him came from jazz.

Ever since his late father took him as a child to a jazz club, he heard "black improv music" and it ignited a spark in his heart. Despite his talent and enthusiasm, he still had to compromise with his mother's expectations and decided to teach to make a living. And his mother, who owned and ran her own tailor shop, saw firsthand the hardships behind his father's jazz career.

In fact, Joe did give up his dream until the same day, an invitation to a band initiated by a famous saxophonist arrived at the same time, ecstatically, he ignored the open manhole cover and finally fell, becoming his last day on earth.

Seemingly fatal misfortune, but his soul was drawn from his body, and Joe's soul was sent to the Great Beyond, a cosmic hall with a long walk, where all souls lined up, Then drive towards White Light. Apparently Joe hasn't come to terms with his death, so he runs in the other direction, falling off the sidewalk and ending up in a brightly colored area called "The Great Before."

"The Great Before" has its own rules and procedures and is part of a larger spiritual ecosystem designed to guide new souls so that they can discover the "spark" that will lead them to happiness and joy Life.

And these little blue weddings first need to have their own "personality" and find their own passion and spark before they can get a "pass" to enter the earth. Joe is mistaken for a mentor, helping others find their "spark," but instead is paired with a troublemaker named 22.

22 is a very interesting and rebellious being, her character is incomplete and she does not understand life. After more than 2,000 years, she still failed to get the final "Spark" badge, and even the greatest mentor in the world could not let her discover her passion. Losing hope, 22 completely gave up the idea of finding a "spark". She began to believe that life was meaningless, and she had no interest in being sent to Earth, much less the point of landing on Earth to live there.

Until she met Joe, she saw that Joe's life was full of failures, but his desire to return to Earth was almost crazy, and his obsession with unrealized art made her a huge interest. They make a deal and work with each other, Joe helps her find the spark, and she helps Joe get back to Earth.

The truth, however, is that no matter how much great music, food, literature or science you show her, she doesn't care. Because the soul has never actually existed, can't see the attraction of the body, and can't feel any sense of taste, smell, or touch, Joe faces a huge challenge - to show 22 life by expressing his own views on life. what is.

In order to return to Earth Joe and 22 go to seek the services of "Fengyue". He is a "mystic without borders" who sails on a giant ship in a mysterious area of "The Realm of Ecstasy". It was a dark, sandy wasteland full of lost souls.

Moonbreeze explained that souls sometimes get lost in zones by becoming overly obsessed with their targets. When we are truly obsessed with something, our hearts and souls follow because there is little that can disrupt our focus, even if it becomes a mistake.

And from here, the film starts a philosophical narrative for us. Joe's urgency to return to Earth to realize jazz made an unforeseen turn that completely switched his perspective on life. Joe's soul fell into the cat's body, while 22 entered his own body.

(2)

the choices that give our lives meaning,

Can it really satisfy us?

Returning to the familiar New York City, still with the hustle and bustle of the crowd, the car noise, the narrow streets, the scene of New York happening on earth captures the essence of the city. The New York scene is still stunning with its realistic textures and the warm, sweet lighting that Pixar could have hoped for.

The peeling paint on the railings and the grease on the pepperoni pizza have never seemed so glamorous. With red awnings, steep stairs leading from the street to the floor below and narrow pioneer clubs, New York is precisely the city where countless jazz legends have been born.

These have laid an important foreshadowing for the message that the film wants to convey to the audience.

The biggest difference between Joe and 22 is that when Joe was very young, through his father, he found his spark - jazz.

Jazz gave him meaning in life, but at the same time it made him overly obsessed with giving up and ignoring many things he should have experienced.

In a barbershop, Joe begins to realize that his obsession with music is hindering his ability to form meaningful friendships; a face-to-face meeting with his hard-working, loving mom, Libba, forces him to finally speak his mind.

Including him seeing 22 use his body through the cat's perspective , the surprise when he learned to walk, the excitement when he took his first bite of pizza, the joy of eating a barber shop lollipop, and looking up at the tree, the sun was shining on his On his face, the admiration of the butterfly falling in his hand, lying on the subway entrance and feeling the pleasure of the hot wind...

Those trivial little details that are used to be ignored, it was not until he really got his body back that he felt the feeling of 22. At that moment, the moment he was crying, I was actually crying too.

In fact, it is more difficult for people living in big cities to realize the "importance of life", many people do not know "how to live", the pressure of society, the expectations of parents, the competition of people around... In the whole environment of involution Next, let's talk about the word "life", which seems to be an extremely luxurious word for many people.

Yesterday, when I was reading a book, I saw a very interesting dialogue, which made me suddenly understand one thing: why do artists understand life better?

The author talks about chatting with an artist who asked him a question about the science of vision. He replied:

"Vision scientists are trying to figure out why we see so much - we see the richness of the physical world around us, while what we see in our eyes are small, distorted and upside-down images. On such a weak basis Above, we have seen so much, what is going on here?"

The artist's answer surprised him, he smiled contemptuously, and said:

"How can they ask such questions? We should ask: Why are we so indifferent to the world around us? The world is so rich, there is so much to discover, why do we see so little?"

Regarding the visual experience, it allows the author to clearly see two very different viewpoints of people.

One is the view of scientists: the process of "seeing" occurs in the brain, because it is the brain that makes sense of the information obtained on the retina.

The other is the artist's point of view: "seeing" is not a natural, spontaneous process; we too easily ignore what is already there. Seeing is a harvest, our harvest, the harvest we only have when we communicate with what exists, and we often turn a blind eye.

In fact, Joe in the play is also an artist, but he also seems to be described as a flat, well-behaved middle-aged frustrated man.

Maybe he thinks he is an artist, but obviously when he pursues the so-called "sense of meaning", he just ignores many things that should exist and lacks communication with them.

(3)

When all dreams come true,

Are you bored?

There is also a part of the film that I really want to discuss, about "dream fulfillment".

Joe has been obsessed with thinking his life is incomplete without realizing the obsession with art that always drives him crazy.

When Joe got his body back as he wished, and sat at the piano and started to play, he entered that "selfless state" again, and as the mystic Yuefeng said: "When happiness becomes a kind of When addicted, people become disconnected from their lives.”

Few family movies dare to admit:

Sometimes, fulfilling your dreams can leave you emptier than before.

Joe caught up with the performance as he wished, and after performing on stage with his favorite saxophonist, when he walked out of the door from the bar, he felt that he had finally realized his dream and completed a wonderful performance, and asked with great interest: "I want to do it tomorrow. what?"

And the female musician just told him indifferently: "Continue to perform here tomorrow."

You see, when the goal you have longed for most of your life is finally achieved, and you find that it is just falling into another new cycle, your highlight moment is just that moment, and in the end the sea you long for is nothing but water in the eyes of a fish. That's all.

Pixar really interprets the true meaning of life very well. Because life is composed and filled with all kinds of firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, and all kinds of trivial things.

Even great musicians can't escape the dullness of the day after day. Insipidity is the norm. If you don't adjust your mentality, you will only fall into endless loss and boredom.

Yesterday, while chatting with my boyfriend, I asked him, "Would you be bored if one day you got everything you wanted?"

He gave me the following answer:

Last week, when we were chatting about podcasts, Haicheng told me that he envied one of AI's abilities, that is, he knew how to live and how to make himself very happy, and some friends around him, after getting the so-called fame and fortune , will fall into a kind of emptiness and boredom, not knowing what to do.

I am very fortunate that the other half's answers and actions also showed me "as a human being, how to live every minute of the moment seriously."

Facing human nature, knowing how to be content, and cherishing and being grateful for what you have are the most powerful weapons against desire and boredom.

(4)

Life is not about having a larger narrative than purpose,

But to know how to understand it.

In fact, this movie has been telling us one thing -

I am a human being, not a human doing.

It reminds us that Joe is more than the sum of his ambitions, and that life is more than just club gigs.

It's a crisp, sunny day in autumn, a slice of pepperoni pizza, a breeze wafting from the subway grate, a barbershop with a warm vibe and kind indignities, where the barbers not only have superb barbers, Also meet and listen to your needs.

Film uses elements of "art" (music) to appeal to and express philosophical thinking, and film itself is just another art form.

Art looks at things, not as they are, as they are, or as they actually happen, but at the different meanings they may have, a thought experiment; therefore, fundamentally, they are philosophical.

When we appreciate art, our feelings and emotions—fear, empathy, regret, empathy, anger—are not just the reactions that arise in us, the reactions that are inspired by some untrue event. Our participation, our feelings, are participation in the problem of life itself.

Yesterday, I found the best interpretation of life and this movie in the book "Strange Tools":

We are by no means living in a series of meaningless sensations, in a jumble of haphazard feelings or images, that make up the experience of our living state. The experiences we clearly know and enjoy are far more structured than this.

As Dewey put it, they are one and the same, complete, nameable: the experience of having dinner in Venice, the experience of studying in college, the experience of buying a house, the experience of trying to sleep last night, the experience of having children... …

There is an implication in such thematic, well-structured experiences, which is that they are gains.

We are making them. We don't just experience them, we need to plan.

If you think of life as a babbling river, with action and responsibility, then acquiring meaning and completeness is a valuable thing, because meaning and completeness are important characteristics of our real-life experience.

Every experience, since it is an experience, is complete. It has form, it has meaning, it is made, it is harvested. It is aesthetic.

Life itself is a meaning-making activity. All experience, as long as it is an experience, takes place in an aesthetic space. Because to be complete, to be seamless, to be organized and orderly, is to have a sense of beauty.

Like dancing and singing, perception itself, including thinking and doubt, is aesthetic and has a sense of beauty. If there is no beauty, it is not art, and it is not an experience at all.

So, in a sense, Dewey's point is that we are all artists.

Life itself is an experience-making activity. That is precisely what art is about.

Art is experience; artists are not making things, they are making experiences.

So, in a sense, all of us are artists, we all live.

And life is an experience-making process, a process of creatively responding to what we do in the face of what has already happened.

Finally, there are two interesting insights.

I'm watching a "kids" movie, but Pixar actually depicts two worlds in two ways: the New York metropolis vs the afterlife.

The former, perhaps the intricate textures and details of urban landscapes that only adults can appreciate; the latter, which uses simple colors and shapes to outline the world of one-dimensional, cuddly, furry creatures that children are more inclined to appreciate.

One of the more subtle and bold aspects of the film is that it has no overtly white character - it seems natural that Joe's closest family and circle of friends are all black, and even some authority figures like the principal, the doctor, the casual A police officer, also all people of color, of all genders and races. This deliberately created view of life in the black community may have a deeper meaning at this moment.

Whether it's falling leaves on an autumn afternoon, piping hot pizza, dipping your toes in the ocean, making music with your favorite...

These pictures and narratives, in a world shrouded by the epidemic, may have even greater meaning behind them.

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