‘Soul’ Delivers An Uplifting Message About Giving Up

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Soul on Disney+.

Every kid has that one thing that they really, really love. Right? Maybe it’s soccer. Maybe it’s piano. Maybe it’s dance. Maybe it’s choir. Maybe it’s photography. Maybe it’s volleyball. Maybe it’s drumming. Maybe it’s filmmaking. It doesn’t matter what your hobby is, but you do have to find it in order to know what you want to do when you grow up. At least, that’s what Tina Fey‘s character in Pixar’s new film, Soul, thinks. And that’s what I—someone who tried and gave up on all of the above-listed hobbies as a child—used to think, too.

Fey voices a drifting soul, known only as 22, trapped in a purgatory called The Great Before. Unless she finds her “spark,” she’s told, she will never get her “Earth Pass,” which will allow her to inhabit the body of a human. She’s convinced she’ll never find it, and decides she doesn’t want to go to earth, anyway. No one—not Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, or Mother Teresa—can convince her otherwise. If she can’t find that one thing she loves, then what’s the point of living? Enter Soul‘s protagonist, Joe Gardner (voiced by Jamie Foxx), a middle school jazz teacher who dies just after he lands the piano-playing gig of a lifetime. Joe refuses to die before his big break—before landing his dream job—and so he becomes 22’s mentor, instead. Joe and 22 strike a deal: Joe will help 22 find her spark, and then he will take her Earth Pass. Joe gets a second chance at life; 22 gets to remain in The Great Before. Win-win.

They look for 22’s spark in the Hall of Everything. Joe thinks it will be easy—he knows all about sparks, because his, he thinks, is piano. He has 22 try being a firefighter, a painter, a librarian, a chemist, a gymnast, an astronaut, and the President of the United States. Her reaction to each job is simply: “Meh.” It is not unlike the torturous career days where young kids in elementary school are forced to talk to local business folk to see if they feel a “spark” for, say, data entry or pharmaceutical work.

The set-up is a bit complicated. But if you’re willing to play along with world-building exposition (including a literal instruction video), you’ll get an apt metaphor for what was, for me, my biggest childhood anxiety. You’re told that you can be anything you want to be, but underlying that supposedly motivational adage is a command to pick something, stick with it, and make it a core part of your life—ideally as a career—for the rest of eternity. For me, the pressure to choose was all-consuming, to the point where I broke down sobbing when my parents—who were perfectly supportive, never overbearing, and only wanted to encourage my interests—bought me a drumset after I started taking lessons in middle school.

My parents were baffled by my tears on the morning of my 14th birthday. I later wrote in my diary what I couldn’t articulate to them: I knew this big, expensive present would only taunt me for being a failure when I inevitably quit playing. (I was right; the tom-toms and hi-hat gathered dust in the basement for years before my parents finally got rid of it. I feel ashamed thinking about it to this day.) But I didn’t want drumming to be my purpose. I didn’t love it that much, not in the way I thought I was supposed to. I could feel myself being steered toward a dream job I didn’t want, so—just as 22 refuses to go to Earth—I planted my feet and resisted. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I didn’t know why I couldn’t find anything I loved enough to devote my life to doing. But I dreaded growing up, when, I knew, I would be forced to choose.

If I’d had a movie like Soul—directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Kemp Powers, and written by Docter, Powers, and Mike Jones—maybe I would have known my feelings were perfectly normal. After 22 gets a chance to live on Earth in Joe’s body (long story), she realizes, actually, there are things that make her happy. But they aren’t the kind of things that can be exploited as labor. It’s the breeze gently blowing the leaves as she walks down the sidewalk on an autumn day in New York City, or the guitar played by a busker in the subway station.

“Maybe sky-watching can be my spark,” she suggests hopefully. “Or walking! I’m really good at walking!”

“Those really aren’t purposes, 22,” Joe responds. “That’s just regular old living.”

But later, when 22 finally gets her pass and Joe asks Jerry, one of the soul counselors in the Great Before, what 22’s purpose was, the ethereal entity simply laughs at him.

“A spark isn’t a soul’s purpose!” Jerry says. “Oh, you mentors and your passions. Your purposes, your meanings-of-life. So basic.”

Spoiler alert: Joe gets his body back in time to play his gig. It goes well. It goes really well. The lead singer compliments him. He gets a permanent position with the band. He has, technically, landed his dream job. So why does everything still feel so mundane? Why doesn’t his life begin, like he thought it would? It’s because, of course, life is not about having a purpose. It’s not about a dream job. It’s about regular old living. Joe’s life had begun long before. He just wasn’t really living it.

The lesson here is not quite to give up on your dream job; it’s about letting go of the idea that having one is the only path to happiness. Hobbies are great. Passions are great. But those things—soccer, singing, piano, or even drumming—don’t have to be your entire life. They don’t have to contribute to society. They don’t have to earn you money. They don’t have to somehow be molded to fit a capitalist ideal of a purpose. And if you give up on them, that’s OK, because life is not about a single spark.

“The truth, I always thought something was wrong with me,” 22 confesses at one point. “Like maybe I wasn’t good enough for living.” But she was always good enough. It was the rest of us who couldn’t see it.

Watch Soul on Disney+