Note: This post inclues spoilers for the Pixar movie Soul so please go and watch it first if you haven’t seen it yet. It is one of the best movies ever made (not just for animation).
Have you seen Tangled? The Disney movie is a perfect example for the type of stories we have absorbed since we were children. Without even realising, we learned toview our lives through the lens of these narratives. But there’s a new story out there and it’s getting more mainstream. Enter Pixar’s Soul. Once we allow ourselves to fully embrace the new story of our life, we are on the path to a new kind of freedom.
The popular story
At the beginning of Tangled, like in most Disney and other movies in general, there’s a scene telling us about Rapunzel’s everyday life. Because it is Disney, the scene is accompanied by a song. Encanto and Moana have one too. The idea is to show the viewer what “normal” life is like before the inciting incident, the moment that changes everything and sends the main character on their quest.
The term “inciting incident” is from writing and this structure is taught as the perfect basis for stories in popular novels and movies. The beginning of the novel or movie shows “normal life” as terrible (Cinderella), holding the protagonist back from reaching their true potential (Moana) or at the very least boring (Tangled) so that we know why the protagonist leaves in the first place.
“Make it look painful” was writing advice I once read, because the bigger the difference between the beginning and the end of the journey, the more impactful the story feels to readers and viewers. Going from misery to bliss is better than from meh to slightly less meh. Once you know about this structure, you’ll notice it everywhere in popular media.
Inciting Incident
This strucure is gripping, everywhere and we are so used to it, I bet you never even questioned it. Neither did I until I re-watched Tangled and sang along with Mandy Moore: “When will my life begin?” I suddenly realised that the song was quite harmful because we have internalised it and based our expectations of life on it.
All of these stories stress that the life pre-quest is meaningless. It’s waiting time before the “real” life starts, which only happens after one cataclysmic event that changes everything. Unconsciously, most of us expect our life to be like that and are acting accordingly.
Expectations
How much attention to you pay to your routines and habits? None? Why would you? This is just the build-up, the boring stuff we get through until that one moment that changes everything. Maybe we’re waiting for the “love of our lives” while we sort of put up with who we’re currently with. Or we’re seeking the one solution for our problems: the religion that enlightens us with a sentence, the insight that turns a meh life into a joy fest, or the message that sends us on a quest.
In the meantime we wait, put up with unhappy moment after unhappy moment, or worse, pay as little attention to our lives as we can. We take jobs we don’t like to “get to where we want to be…” in fifty years. We stay with partners we don’t like until the real deal comes along. We even live in places we don’t like. One day we’ll wake up and know – just know – it’s time to move on. Right?
Some of us search actively. We go from one teacher/one technique/one ideology to the next and when instant enlightenment is not forthcoming, we move on. Or worse, assume there is something wrong with us because the technique works for other people but had no miraculous effect on our lives.
Every now and then we get discouraged until we watch another movie and read another book, telling us that this is the story! That’s how life works, and the inciting incident is just around the corner. Or we decide we’re not the main protagonist and resign ourselves to a “meaningless” life.
A different story
It’s time for a new story. Have you watched Soul yet? Seriously, there will be spoilers! Get a free trial of Disney+ if you have to or subscribe for a month. The movie is absolutely worth it. Or decide you don’t want to watch it anyway and read on. Back to the blog.
Soul is about life as it really is: A series of moments. At the beginning of the movie Joe (protagonist, in his 40s and sort of dead) and 22 (soul who has not lived yet) go into the Hall of Self. It hosts an exhibition of moments in Joe’s life. There’s a statue of him waiting for his laundry, eating a cake, and teaching band practise. When he sees these mundane moments, Joe is devastated because he thinks he wasted his life.
Did he? Do you? At the end of the movie Joe achieved what he thought was his quest: He got to play in a professional jazz band and had a brilliant concert. But afterwards he still has to take the subway to get back to his flat. He is disappointed because he imagined, like we all often do, that one moment would change everything forever.
Moment by moment
But life is not one story. It’s not a quest for one goal either. Life is a series of moments. As Scanners we’re used to seeing our lives in smaller increments than most people. For them changing a job after many years is a big life-change and they often treat it as the beginning of a new chapter. For us, these new chapters are just much shorter.
Also, we often have overlapping stories. We might be at the beginning of a new interest, like learning about Yoga, while we still love writing and are just returning to web-design. Sometimes these overlapping stories make us feel lost and confused because we were taught to look for one consistent thread in our lives. The one story “that makes sense” inevitably leads us to feel defeated because we’re applying the wrong type of structure.
When life is about one moment after another, all that matters is that one moment. In this story type, we shine! Release all the guilt you might be feeling about going down rabbit holes and allow yourself to focus on what matters to you because being you is always a win-win.
Flow
At the beginning of Soul Joe wants to return into his body and to his life. At the end of the movie, Joe goes back to living. It’s a verb. We live right here and right now. He has no idea what he will do next, and the movie does not tell us. But it doesn’t matter. What does matter is his resolution: He will make the most of every moment.
22 calls this jazzing and I love the word. The movie is also about music, particularly jazz, which is all about improvisation. What makes jazz music good? Even though the players do not know what they are going to play beforehand, they pick up themes and repeat them with variations, let the music flow and change course if it feels good. Individual notes turn into beautiful melodies.
That’s living. One note at a time. One moment at a time. Maybe you turn happy notes into a happy theme. Maybe there’s a sad interlude. Discord can be scary too but afterwards you appreciate harmony so much more. So pay attention to the notes you play because they grow into melodies and if you choose your band wisely, even the audience becomes irrelevant because you’re just having too much fun.
Jazzing
Life is one moment after another, one experience, one emotion, one action, one breath after another. Pay attention and choose wisely. Have as much fun as you can while you play. Appreciate the details of your life. Don’t worry about the big picture.
Life is not a symphony. You are here to play, meet your bands, shift, change, try again. Once you appreciate every note, the songs write themselves. You are not here to live a purpose or even to create a masterpiece that might outlive you (or not). You are here to jazz.