Soul

Soul on Disney+ was one of the many films we took in over the holiday break. But unlike those other many films, Soul affected me… deeply. I watched a Black, middle-aged cartoon jazz musician desperate to pursue his passion and I thought - that’s me! (Except for the Black, cartoon jazz musician bit…)

Soul is about a man who can’t give up on his dreams no matter how late in the day it is. He defies death itself to take advantage of his big break, only to discover what he was after wasn’t as fulfilling as he’d always imagined it would be. An encounter with a reluctant ‘new soul’ helps him realize life is really about finding pleasure in the present moment, whatever and whoever surrounds us. 

How many of us get to a certain point in life - a terrifying point when we must acknowledge there may be fewer years before us than behind us - and think, “well, shit, this isn’t turning out quite how I thought”? How many of us wonder if we’re doing this life-thing right? 

Over the years, I have learned the importance of gratitude. I (usually) stop myself from nagging my lovely husband when he fails to put his clothes away by reminding myself how many delicious meals he has cooked (and often cleaned) during this lockdown year. I intentionally turn my thoughts away from what bothers me to focus on what I love about the people in my life. And I think of my father, who died in 2014, and I remind myself to appreciate every day I get with the people who are here.

I know how fortunate I am. And my life has included some pretty amazing memories too: working for Senator Ted Kennedy and Olympian Greg Louganis; speaking in the inspiring Palace of Westminster; watching elephants on safari in Africa; having a wild dolphin poop on my head in Zanzibar (that has to be good luck); feeling the spray of a humpback whale off Cape Cod; seeing the Northern Lights in Finland, dipping my toe in the Nile.

But still, there is a little hole inside me, a box left unticked, an unfulfilled yearning to express myself in writing. Or, more specifically, to earn my living by writing. And the time feels like it’s getting late… tick, tick, tick goes my life clock. 

Like Joe, I’ve been at this awhile. And yet, not quite long enough. If I’ve learned one important lesson, it’s that persistence pays. In the last two months I’ve seen two of my best friends who never gave up take huge steps towards great success - my sister of Whim Events in Boston, MA was named one of Brides Magazine’s best wedding planners in America and a fellow writer signed with an incredible agent. 

I, on the other hand, gave up my novel writing just as I was getting close. In 2015, I looked around at the slate of crazy, pandering jerks running for the Republican nomination and concluded none of them could ever be elected president. I thought I’d do the party a favor by writing an Aaron Sorkin-like novel about the 2020 election in which a Republican woman I could respect (if not vote for) beats Hillary Clinton. I wanted to write about a Republican party I wish existed… though the vision I had now seems more a fantasy than Game of Thrones.  

In October 2016, six agents were reading my manuscript. I felt close to my dream of publication. November 2016, zero agents were still considering my book. It’s bad for business if you try to predict the future and fail.

I was so depressed afterwards by the state of the world, I developed terrible writer’s block. I couldn’t get anything onto paper. All I could do was doom scroll and scold the world on Facebook. That is until my husband pulled me aside and said he didn’t mind me not working if I was writing, but he minded very much being the sole earner if all I was doing was reposting articles on social media all day. It was a fair point.

I ended up getting a job. A pretty cool job lobbying for better air quality. But I got to the end of 2019 and felt the utter discontent of having nothing “of me” to show for the year. I was working to make someone else’s dream come true. A good dream, but not mine.

By that time, I had the idea of writing screenplays. Lockdown and furlough gave me the perfect opportunity to try. At the end of 2020, I had written one 60-minute pilot for a series about Eleanor of Aquitaine, which placed in the semifinals of two international competitions and the quarterfinals of another, and with a writing partner, one feature length screenplay. I am now working on another feature about one of the most inspiring men I’ve ever met, an Olympic skier turned RAF fast jet pilot who has overcome life-threatening challenges and terrible loss to achieve his dreams. 

I felt much better at the end of 2020, having something “of me” down on paper. A step toward my writing dream - though I know I still have a lot to learn and many years gaining expertise in this new discipline. 

But as I watched Soul, I couldn’t help wondering if it was a cautionary tale. I do know more than a few people who have achieved the dreams I hold in my heart and far from finding them fulfilling and life-changing, they’ve become disillusioned. 

What lesson is there in Soul for me? I think it could be this - whatever I do this year, I have to do it from love. I have to fill my life with the people I love and the things I love doing. 

I have a friend who is considering retiring but is worried about filling his day. I can understand the fear of life just passing by day-by-day without a sense of purpose, or at least the format and structure that comes from work. I talked to him about what interests him, what he cares about beyond himself. Finding something in that to pursue.

As Soul puts it, what is his “spark”? 

Because finding a spark - something in life to love - is, I think, what it’s all about. I find myself distracted by the idea of money or fame or great success but ultimately, as I remind myself, Jane Austin probably doesn't know her name lives on… if she does know, she probably doesn’t much care (I can’t believe ego is a big thing in an afterlife). So it must come down to love.

And that’s what I’m doing here. Allowing myself a space to write just for the love of writing… without looking to be judged or censured. Without needing to ask anyone else’s permission or approval. (One of my other frustrations with how life has worked out for me is feeling like I have no voice. No way to be heard. Not saying anyone will read this - it’s alright if no one does - but this is just a place to say what I want to say out loud…)

More on that tomorrow when I begin to address how Trump and Fox destroyed America.  But other thoughts here will include how right the writers of Soul might have been in their conception of the before and after life, Existentialism, Transcendentalism, Platonic theory, regular ol’ politics, education, the meaning of life, love and always… dreams…