How Pixar's Soul Can Teach Adults Some Valuable Life Lessons, Too

Important Life Lessons We Can Learn from Pixar’s Soul

Soul (2020) is Pixar’s latest movie. Released on December 25 on Disney+, it’s Director Pete Docter’s follow-up to Inside Out. But unlike Inside Out’s venture into the psyche, Soul ventures deep into subjects such as death and the afterlife.

WARNING: spoilers ahead

Soul explores many of our existential thoughts and questions such as: Why are we here? Why were we born? What is our spark? What makes life worth living?

Soul opens with lead character Joe, a middle-aged jazz pianist living in New York. He’s lived all his life chasing his dream – to finally catch his big break. After ending his day teaching as a middle school band instructor, he gets a call for an audition for one of New York’s most famous jazz bands. To cut to the chase, he books the gig (yay!) and as he absent-mindedly wanders through New York telling all his friends about it, he walks straight into an open manhole and wakes up in the Great Before.

Joe spends the rest of the movie figuring out how to escape the Great Before and get back to his body on Earth, going as far as trading places with an unborn soul named 22 to do so. When he succeeds at reuniting with his Earth-body, he finally gets the chance to perform his dream gig.

The catch? It wasn’t as he expected.

Joe believes his one true purpose in life is to play jazz. That’s his calling. What he was put on life to do. His SPARK. When he reaches what he thinks is the pinnacle of his life, he finds that he still isn’t satisfied.

Soul offers an important lesson to many. That maybe our lives aren’t meant to be lived for one single moment. Rather, the beauty of life lies in the smaller, mundane moments that happen in between. The moments we don’t plan for. The moments we don’t anticipate.

“Maybe sky-watching can be my spark,” 22 tells Joe after living half a day in his body. “Or walking! I’m really good at walking!”

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

Often, we get so caught up creating grand plans and scheduling the next big step in our lives that we completely forget to live in the now. But is there really something so bad about regular old living?

Many of us have had our life plans thrown off schedule because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s understandable for you to want to mourn all that could have been. A valuable life lesson that Soul has to teach us is to appreciate all the little moments that life has to offer us that happen in between the big moments we plan for ourselves.

That’s the beauty of life. All the little moments that make each day unique. So, if you find yourself a little sad about your lost plans, don’t be. Remember there’s still so much life left to live. Slow down, enjoy each minute, and rediscover that spark that makes life so worth living.