Working from Within

My distaste for animated movies is unfairly founded – I know this now. For whatever reason, I had an unusual aversion to what many would term “endearing, light-hearted, fun.” I guess in my mind I always believed animated films were the vehicles for simplistic entertainment. Harsh? Perhaps. But that distaste – if it can be so called – was shattered, recently, by the brilliant work of Peter Docter in the Disney/Pixar flick, “Inside Out.” My youngest sister, Maria, coaxed my family into going together, and, because sisterhood is a remarkably strong bond and guilt an often lasting one, I found myself in attendance a week or so ago. What I didn’t anticipate was the emotional tetris I experienced in watching “Inside Out,” which had me crying one moment and laughing the next, all while transposing my memories on the character’s own journey. What masquerades as a colorful, well-designed children’s movie is simply anything but.

Without delving too heavily into the plot, so as not to spoil future showings, Docter creates a fictional world that essentially encapsulates what many of us feel during the years of transition – when we journey from childhood to adulthood – and he magnifies the poignant stops along the way. The protagonist of the film, a young girl named Riley is uprooted from her family’s home in Minnesota when her father begins an entrepreneurial endeavor in San Francisco. The viewer undergoes a similar journey, metaphorically traveling into the psychology of Riley’s brain, which plays host to the vacillation of the film’s major emotions personified as disgust, sadness, fear, anger, and joy. These memorable characters epitomize the emotion they are meant to represent, almost too simply at times, but the interaction, the struggles these characters exemplify, within Riley’s brain, is far from simple. The sentiments, the experiences, the end of one chapter and the beginning of another, all thematic elements explored within the film, create a raw and relatable response from the audience (well, at least from this viewer and, based on the film’s popularity, I surmise from many others).

While I could go on about the film’s/Docter’s brilliance, it’s the figurative marriage between joy and sadness and their relationship to the other emotions that still has me thinking. The film hinges on the fact that emotions essentially “drive us,” controlling how we respond to situations. While it is within our power to determine how we respond emotionally, not the schemes of imagined, colorful characters, the film reminds us of an important point: so much remains outside of our control.

From a professional standpoint, I imagine there are many of us who can attest the changing nature of higher education, and, resultantly, our field of student affairs. Additional services, improved practices, and new areas of responsibility are all a product of that change, change that may not necessarily be per our instigation, but one to which we must respond. Even within my short, but meaningful professional journey, I have witnessed and personally experienced significant change. Despite this truth, we are not left powerless; we still have the ability to control our response and it is that response – the emotive reaction we choose – that has the potential to positively alter the landscape of not only our outlook, but others.

As the film attests, it’s ok to be sad when experiencing change. In fact, we may need to be at times, and it’s also ok to feel other emotions, too. But it’s important to remember: where there is sadness, there is joy – they are integrally and importantly connected – but eventually one must give way to the other. As the film suggests, letting go of the familiar, the comfortable is a difficult task, but when we do let go we make space for new opportunity, which possesses the potential to be even better.  

So, in these remaining weeks of summer and in preparation for the academic year that lies ahead, perhaps it’s worth asking: what response will you choose?