Soul (2020)

One of my takeaways from the film Soul (2020) is to make your passion serve your life’s purpose. I realized this from a post taken from Twitter that said, ‘Something that’s sticking with me from #SoulMovie is your passion is not your purpose. Burying your identity in what you “like” to do is honestly just ego. Even your biggest gifts are not all that you are. Your passion is an extension of you. But it is not you. It is not why you’re breathing. It’s a tool to navigate life, but it is not you. It’s not why you matter. A tough but necessary pill to swallow.’

I think the problem with making your passion your purpose is it will eventually get old. Once you are successful in doing it, what’s next? How do you surpass that joy you feel once you accomplished it? You may also feel let-down, that all this suffering and hard work culminated in a few minutes of a flood of emotions. Eventually, you have to move on from that victory. And then, at some point, passion turns into drudgery. It’s no longer something you like to do. Who are you then?

So you have to make your passion serve your purpose. 

We all have purpose. According to Viktor Frankl (an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust), there are three ways in discovering your meaning: By devoting yourself to someone; by devoting yourself to your life’s work; or by devoting yourself to a cause greater than yourself.

Once you discover your purpose, your passion becomes guided. Drudgery makes sense. Everything else follows.

In college, I discovered that my purpose is to serve the people. And the things I was passionate about then (writing, good grammar, patriotism), fell in line with that. Not instantly, but because I oriented these things toward my life’s purpose, they all followed. I was able to go past these passion projects and see how they can better serve the people. So these grew with me and blossomed into other projects.

Aligning passion with my purpose made me realize that there is wisdom in working with other people. More experience, more fresh eyes. This was also shown in the film, where Joe was supported by others in his pursuit of music, even as he felt he was alone in this.

So: Find your purpose; find your people; and align your passion to these. Then you will have soul.



4/1/2021