In my life, there was a major disillusionment.
It was the summer when I was about to turn eighteen. I was standing in the middle of the rostrum in the playground after my elementary school, reaching out to grab the flagpole heated by the sun, closing my eyes and opening them again, everything in front of me was still empty and quiet.
No one knows how significant that moment means to me.
Because of my dad’s work, I have been tossing around with my parents in different cities since I was a child, which made me extremely insecure. The city of my elementary school and the city of junior high school are separated by almost half of China-since I entered junior high school, I hated that place very much, and I was very unhappy for the next few years. I have the same dream over and over again: I have returned to my elementary school and can chase and fight with my dear friends. I have been in difficult contact with them by long-distance calls, and I know they miss me, just as I miss them.
My parents always tell me: That city has nothing to do with you, you have to learn to adapt to the current city. If you can pass the college entrance examination, we will take you back when you reach the age of eighteen.
So my whole adolescence goal is only this thing.
I don't care about the scenery I see day after day, and I don't care what everyone around me thinks of me. Every day before me is like a demo of a certain game, like a trial version before the official archive is taken seriously.
Even I don’t even care about filling in the college entrance examination. I just filled in a broken school that I don’t know at all. I didn’t do anything during the summer vacation of the third year of high school. I just waited at home.
Finally I waited until my parents bought me a ticket, and finally I stood in the backyard of the elementary school.
For me at the time, magic was about to happen—at that moment I gathered all the conditions, can reset the inexplicable six years, and can resist the unwilling parting when I was twelve years old.
But when I closed my eyes and opened them again, the miracle did not happen.
I am still standing alone in the center of the rostrum, time has not gone backwards.
Although that summer vacation, my elementary school classmates and I also got together, but everything was always wrong. The heart that thought it would be filled with happiness again is still empty.
In "Spiritual Journey", the male protagonist pursued his jazz dream all his life. After many twists and turns, he finally got the opportunity to perform on the same stage with well-known musicians, and the performance was also very successful. That night, he sent away relatives and friends who were watching the show, and suddenly felt a sense of loss in his heart.
His feelings are probably similar to how I felt when I was eighteen.
You have worked hard for so long, you have ignored everything along the way, and have been focused on waiting for a miracle to happen, so that you can have the power to overthrow all the bad things in the past.
But what then?
The protagonist of the film "Spiritual Journey" is a talented pianist, but his profession is just a middle school music teacher-and he is also a part-time teacher, without insurance and no pension. At the beginning of the film, the school brought him a good news: he can get a regular job, and he has been organized since then, so he doesn't have to worry about his life.
His family thought it was great news, but he couldn't be happy.
He is afraid that his life will be locked in this boring job. He is far away. He wants to play jazz in the bar with the best musicians to inspire resonance in the soul.
Playing the piano is what makes him happiest, and it is also the only mission he believes to allow him to exist in this world.
When he was half-life and half-dead, and his soul was out of his body, he saw the silhouette of his life condensed before his eyes: under the guidance of his father, he yearned for music since childhood, but was rejected by various performance opportunities time and time again, and finally in middle school. As an ordinary teacher, facing a group of students with uneven quality, not young but without love and career, sitting alone in a fast food restaurant for dinner...
At that moment he was shocked: It turns out that my life is so meaningless.
But he still wanted to go back and stay alive, and wanted to win back the opportunity to play with the famous musicians. He felt that as long as he could finish that performance, his life would be different.
When exploring the method of returning to the world, he was fortunate enough to see the process of each soul in this world-before souls are born in the world, they will be assigned to different categories, and then undergo various exercises: Narcissistic, indifferent, and optimistic, all the innate personality is branded at that time.
And the last and most critical step is that each soul finds its own "spark".
In the world where souls are born, those embryonic souls can try countless activities under the guidance of their instructors: sports, music, art... a certain kind of attempt will ignite sparks in their hearts, and then they will be able to Qualifications to be born on earth.
After visiting the protagonist a few times, he firmly believes that his "spark" is music.
And the precocious, world-weary No. 22 soul he got acquainted with here seems to love nothing and look forward to everything-it is a soul without a goal, unable to reincarnate for a long time, making all the mentors helpless, just Even Mother Teresa and the philosopher Jung were half-dead by her.
By chance, the soul of No. 22 fell into the world with the protagonist, and attached to the protagonist's original body.
Through the body of the protagonist, the soul of No. 22 is blowing the hot wind brought by the galloping subway, playing with the autumn leaves, eating the fragrant pizza on the street, listening to the performances of the street performers in the subway station, and the barber shop. My eldest brother chatted, watching the protagonist’s mother cut clothes...Everything made her feel novel and yearning.
Thoughtful, she said to the protagonist: Maybe my "spark" is looking at the sky or walking.
The protagonist sneered at this: These are not life goals, they are just the most ordinary daily life.
But when they returned to the world where the soul was born again, everyone was surprised to find that Soul 22 had become complete—unknowingly, she was no longer tired of the world, and even qualified to be born into the world.
The protagonist is puzzled: But she has not found her goal in life!
The staff gave the protagonist a helpless look: Who told you that "spark" is a soul's "life goal"?
The meaning of life is not to have a clear goal in life.
What makes the soul of No. 22 complete is her yearning for the world, Chelsea’s street performance, the dirty bottle of ICEE under the seat of Line 7, the hot air blowing from the subway station, the needle thread in the hands of her mother, the half. The unfinished bagel... is all the seemingly insignificant vitality in the world.
Finally, when the protagonist returned to the world and finally successfully completed the performance, he asked the people beside him: What are we going to do next?
The band boss next to him replied: We will be back here tomorrow night to play today's content again.
He was stunned.
He said: I have been waiting for this moment tonight all my life, and I thought my feelings would be different.
The band boss immediately told him a fable, saying that a young fish had been looking for something called "ocean", and the older fish told it: you are in the ocean now. The young fish replied: I am just in the water, what I want is the ocean.
The fable comes to an abrupt end here, leaving the protagonist in a daze.
On the way home, he looked at his lonely shadow on the subway window, looked at the tired and busy people using their phones, and looked at the seemingly meaningless daily life.
Perhaps he didn't realize until then that he was living too impatiently on this journey.
He always stared at his music dreams eagerly, feeling that he didn't have time to fall in love, and he didn't want to be trapped in a comfortable and stable job. He wholeheartedly looked forward to the moment when the dream came true, so he was absent-minded about all the small feelings along the way.
However, can his life really be defined by the success of a certain performance or a certain kind of career achievement?
Is the spark that he depends on for survival really that distant and grand goal?
If the answer is that simple-then, when he is riding a bicycle through the streets of Manhattan, what is the sunlight that leaks from the branches? Outside the coffee shop in the afternoon, what are the chattering passers-by? What are those children who are watching him devoutly in class? What is the cool sea water blowing over your feet? What is the brilliant firework on the Brooklyn Bridge?
He originally thought that every soul is dedicated to the world for a certain mission.
So when he saw the silhouette of his life condensed before his eyes, he realized that his hurried life was so lackluster. The 22nd soul around him also became curious about him: Your life is so sad, why do you still want to continue to live in the world?
But it happened that his humble life, which was so humble and not worth mentioning, made the soul of No. 22, who had caused many great people a headache, ignited the yearning for the world.
He always talks about "Jazz", so Soul 22 thinks that as long as he learns his way and successfully plays him in life, he has successfully completed "Jazzing".
At first he reluctantly corrected it: there was no word "Jazzing" at all.
Towards the end of the film, we suddenly realized: In fact, the essence of jazz is to do it casually. Just like the successful performances of the protagonist-jazz performances never have a set movement, but based on the current mood and state of the musicians, they use their own instruments as the carrier and chords as the language to communicate and communicate on stage.
Do whatever you want is the charm of jazz.
Jazz was born at the beginning of the last century in New Orleans, where blacks in the south of the United States live in a free and open atmosphere. Later, it gradually moved northward and flourished in Chicago and New York, and then became a unique cultural landscape in Harlem, New York. An important symbol of the "Renaissance".
Whether it is historically, culturally, or in style, it is inseparable from "freedom and randomness". Soul 22 defines his aimless life exploration as "Jazzing", which is a wonderful generalization.
Over the years, I have repeatedly asked about the meaning of life, and finally came to the conclusion: Don't ask about the meaning, because life has no meaning, and after careful consideration, it will only make people retreat.
And this film actually answered my doubts all the time.
Just like the elder brother in the film who aspires to become a veterinarian, he finally chose to become a shaver in order to save money to treat his daughter's illness. He said that not everyone can become a great man who is ancient and modern, but every day I I also feel very happy to chat with the guests coming and going to make everyone look better.
It turns out that the meaning of life is to let us feel every minute of it, feel the wind of summer night, feel the snow in winter, feel the crowd on the subway, feel the tide and sunset. Sometimes chance and coincidence take you around, as if you are on a road completely different from your original intention, but in fact, there are thousands of ways to reach between the starting point and the ending point, and the meaning of life Has long been hidden in this journey.
Every fish lives in the water.
The vast ocean may not be far away.
(In order to reward myself for Christmas, I made a special trip to buy myself a Disney Plus member to watch this movie. Please go to the theater to support the original movie for such a good movie!!!)
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