Like many parents, the last month or two of our lives has been an endless loop of the Encanto soundtrack. Don't get me wrong, I really like LMM music, it's super catchy and the detail and word play blows my mind every time...that being said, I have so much more empathy for my family and how many times I made us watch Robin Hood over and over and over and over and over again when I was little. (And also not so little since I own the blu ray now.) We rented that movie so many times that we probably could've bought the actual video multiple times over.
It feels like in recent years, Disney films have been as much for parents as they've been for kids. Besides its catchy beats, brilliant ensemble, and incredible love and respect for the culture, Encanto hit the family roles and the effects of generational trauma on its head. I feel like I catch something new that I spend days psychoanalyzing every time I hear/see it again. And we've seen it A LOT.
Between being the youngest and not having quite the same academic discipline as my sisters (and therefore "gifts" in the Asian community), there was just so much about Mirabel that resonated. I can distinctly remember feeling all the emotions of "Waiting On A Miracle" through much of my adolescence.
But the thing is, Mirabel's lack of a tangible "gift" ignores that she actually has an incredibly underappreciated superpower. Mirabel's heart and interpersonal and relational skills are her greatest gift. Laura Huang points out in Edge: Turning Adversity Into Advantage "that 'soft skills' [should] be renamed as 'core skills' or 'power skills.' You can't really be successful without them." There's so many layers that I can't even get into about what Encanto has made me wrestle with.
It's taken me years to see that the soft skills that I've been building are actual gifts. That they have value. That they can do incredible things. When I look back on things that would frequently be seen as my "successes", they're built on the strength of my soft skills. I'm not trying to diminish the degrees and titles or practice the ancient Asian art of false humility. I'm proud of what I've accomplished and how hard I worked for those, especially the times I've fallen down and had to get up again. Scrappiness might be the greatest virtue in my heretical opinion. I understand why as a society we frequently value hard skills, academic and career achievements as tangible gifts. I really do. But if most of my 20s was about learning who I really was, then maybe in this decade, I'm finally starting to understand that "half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn" (Larry Niven).
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