SOUL

When many people around me told me about Amway, I came to the cinema with the expectation of the production team's previous film "Journey to the Dream". When I finished watching the movie, I felt that I was filled with a bowl of "inexplicable chicken soup".

Some people say that this is a bowl of poisonous chicken soup, which confuses people not to make progress and is willing to be mediocre. It is self-comfort for people who are unwilling to work hard; Some people say that this is the most healing film of the year. The story is warm and touching, and the truth is plain but profound. It is a good medicine for people to get spiritual comfort in an anxious age.

Whether it is poisonous chicken soup depends on "you".

-synopsis of the story-

Joey Gunnar, a middle school music teacher, got the dream opportunity to play in the best jazz club in new york. But he died because of an accidental slip, so Joey was unwilling to go to the other shore, and his soul came to "the Great Before".

There, the souls who are going to the earth will get their own personality and spark through training. Determined to return to earth life, Joey has become the mentor of the precocious soul "Twenty-two", who has never found his own "spark" and has no yearning for earth life.

Joey wanted to go back to his own life, and he wanted to see where his useless life was worth nostalgia. So the two souls returned to the earth together and started a journey of finding meaning.

Joey and Twenty-two, the two protagonists in Soul, are very much like us at certain moments in our lives.

Let's talk about Joey first.

Joey is a man with dreams. He has been working hard for his dreams, even if he is not understood by his family, even if he is doing a job he doesn't like so much. Even when I got a full-time job in a school band, I was not very happy.

When we are watching movies, it is easy to put ourselves into the perspective of the protagonist. Many people feel that they are "workers who are doing boring work but have dreams" like Joey.

There is a very interesting point about Joey, that is, about "self". When Joey pursues his dream wholeheartedly, his students, his friends and his family can't see anyone.

For example, Joey's "Royal Barber" obviously talks freely every time he meets, but the content of Joey's conversation is always only his favorite jazz music. He is only using the function of "Barber", but he can't see the barber as an individual, or he doesn't care.

Another example is Joey's mother. When Joey is filled with only "Mother hinders me from pursuing my dream", he can't understand or even try to understand the reason why my mother did this.

Another example is that when Joey's students came to his door and confided to him, Joey just wanted to send her away so as to prepare for the evening performance as soon as possible.

Even, in order to return to the earth to realize his dream, Joey spoke irretrievably to Twenty-two.

In the current context, "having dreams" seems to have an inexplicable sense of nobility, and we are particularly tolerant and even indulgent to "people with dreams". But this infinite beautification of dreams always ignores a very realistic question. Is dreams equal to goals? When we really realize a dream, what will happen afterwards?

After several twists and turns, Joey completed the band performance perfectly. He was full of hope that a new chapter would be opened in his life. However, the band's female musicians poured cold water on his face.

We, "Joey" in reality, always have this fantasy, thinking that "once I finish something, my life will be very different", for example, I am unhappy in this city, moving to other cities or living in the countryside will be better; Or I have a bad relationship with Xiao Wang, so long as I change to Xiao Li, it will be sweet and sweet; I don't work well in this company. As long as I change the platform, I can get along well with my colleagues, be favored by my boss, and get promoted and raised to the peak of my life.

Anyone who has played games knows that most games are easy to make people tired, because the routine of playing strange and upgrading is the same, and no matter how to change the difficulty of level or Boss, most of the game time needs to be upgraded in a down-to-earth manner. The same is true of life. Realizing dreams may be the highlight of life, but more time in life is dull and repetitive "doing tasks".

Real life is the same as games. No matter how many environments or games you change, the player will still be you. If you haven't changed, it will be the same everywhere.

Twenty-two has been described as a "soul with a world-weary mood". After many tutors' training, it still can't inspire "sparks", and has been a "nail house" for thousands of years in the place where he was born.

When Joey and Twenty-two returned to Earth, Twenty-two used Joey's body to experience life on Earth. To feel all kinds of earth things that were only "experienced" in the college before. Twenty-two once thought that food, painting, music, and even becoming president of the United States were very boring, which could not arouse her "spark" at all.

However, when she really ate pizza and candy, listened to the music of subway artists, felt the wind stirring her clothes, and even just a flying knife tree fell on her hand, she said that "maybe watching the sky is my spark".

Is this just like us again? Through various videos and information, we saw other people's lives, eating, playing, crying and laughing, so we mistakenly thought that "we already know this kind of food/this film/this sport/this journey …", and we mistakenly thought that we got the same experience, feeling and experience through the glass screen. This is similar to the experience of Twenty-two in college, which is a false experience without real feeling. When our life is filled with "watching other people's lives", we have never lived.

Another remarkable difference between twenty-two and Joey is that everything on earth is "brand new" to her. It is this novelty that makes her spark in Joey's mediocre life.

It is human nature to like the new and hate the old, but when we always look at things unconsciously with our own experience, most people's life can't be filled with enough freshness and excitement. Therefore, we can easily think that "life is mediocre and boring".

It is not difficult for us to feel fresh and greet things we have experienced for the first time. What is difficult is how to face the sense of loss after our dreams come true when we gradually become Joey who is numb to everything except our dreams.

We often see that in film and television works, people who have suffered great hatred are rewarded once, and they lose their life direction from now on. This is no different from Joey after the performance. Jerry in the movie sneered and gave the answer: "Humans are always full of goals and things."

We mistakenly regard the goal as the meaning of life, and think that achieving the goal is the whole meaning of life.

In the movie, this confusion between goal and meaning is expressed in the most straightforward way-the soul of a trader who is lost because he is addicted to pursuing a deal. The wind moon, which looks crazy, said: "When this happiness becomes an obsession and breaks away from life, people become lost souls."

At the end of the movie, Joey finally realized that the spark of soul is not to achieve a great goal, but to remain passionate about ordinary life.

Outside the movies, most of us are ordinary people and don't even have some talents like Joey. But after watching the movie, we can decide whether it is a bowl of poisonous chicken soup or real chicken soup.

It is easy for us to shout slogans such as "accept ordinary life" and "plain is true", but when we face ourselves directly, we really ask ourselves: "Do I really want to believe that I am ordinary?" Our "heart" is good at playing games, and it is easy to be deceived by itself, just for temporary comfort.

A person who is really passionate about life must be always awake, always observing and perceiving his own heart, and truly feeling every second of the moment. Really live every minute of the present.

When you only see the beautiful pictures in the movie and the whimsy of life and death, and just find some excuses to think about your own life, the movie Soul will become your poisonous chicken soup.

And when you really start to want to walk into your heart, you will start your own spiritual journey.

I hope your day will come early. After all, we don't know which will come first, tomorrow or accident.