Growing up isn't easy, and the further we grow from being a child, we often forget what being a kid is like. We think of it as an easy walk in the park. Compared to the bills and responsibilities we take on as adults, it is. But, as a kid, childhood isn't easy. We get struck with change and tragedy, and it has a major effect on the rest of our lives. We undergo personality changes through these events; they really shape who we come to be.
If you haven't seen the movie "Inside Out," the five main emotions drive a console that controls a person's actions and thoughts in a place called "Headquarters." Through the actions and thoughts, memories are created. The memories are different colors based on the emotion that was in control when the memory was made. Yellow is joy, red is anger, purple is fear, green is disgust and blue is sadness. There are also the core memories that are the most important. Each of the core memories powers a different island of an individual's personality.
For Riley, the main character of the film, Joy is her lead emotion, meaning most of her memories are yellow. In the beginning, she has five core memories powering hockey island, goofball island, friendship island, honestly island, and family island. Based on her islands, you gather that hockey, her friends, and her family are of mass importance. And she is a goofball, but an honest one. Basically, Riley leads a pretty blissful and simple life. And all is well until she is faced with a big move from Minnesota to San Francisco. She is forced to leave behind her house, her friends, and her hockey team.
Whether a big move like this, or a tragedy striking, sudden change as a child majorly affects our life from that point on.
We can all relate to a time where we wanted to break down, yet shut it off and put on a fake smile. When joy pushes sadness, anger, fear or disgust to the side, she is refusing to let Riley show her true emotions.
Later on, Riley attends her first day of school. She is asked to stand up and tell the class about herself. Joy brings up a memory of Riley and her parents skating on the lake. As Riley is talking about it, the memory turns blue (sad). Riley is filled with sadness because reminiscing made her miss her hometown, something she will never have again. As joy and the other emotions are trying to figure out why the emotion turned blue, sadness takes full control of the console. Riley begins crying at school. Sadness wasn't able to control herself from touching the console. Sadness was supposed to be in control. Riley was supposed to cry at school. As annoying as the viewer my perceive Sadness to be, she represents an inevitable emotion. We have to feel sad on occasion. We cannot always be happy because life is just not that simple.
Riley crying at school creates a new core memory, a blue one. Joy doesn't like this, so she tries to prevent it from becoming a core memory. In doing so, she managed to get herself and Sadness, and Riley's core memories sucked up into Long-Term memory, and far away from Headquarters.
This means that Riley is temporarily unable to feel Joy or Sadness. Through experience, I'm sure you can think of a time where you tried so hard to shut out your sadness, like Joy was doing, that you became numb to feeling happy as well. This is what Joy and Sadness getting lost in Long-Term Memory represents: Riley's incapability to feel two emotions. As Joy and Sadness struggle to get back to Headquarters, Fear, Anger and Disgust are left to run Riley's life. Riley runs into issues with her parents, and she looses her groove in playing hockey when trying out for a new team. Riley's life seems to be going downhill very quickly, and all of her personality islands are being destroyed. Anger makes a rash decision to run away back to Minnesota because, "She was happier there."
As Riley is about to leave town, Joy and Sadness make it back to headquarters. Joy, in learning to do so on the journey there, allows sadness to take the wheel. Riley comes back home to her parents, and is left to, at last, tell them what's going on in her head. Sadness touches all of the core memories, in which they turn blue. Riley begins crying, something her parents rarely saw, but something she wanted to do a long time ago, but ignored it. Her parents welcome her sadness with open arms, and are there for her. When they hug her, Riley is happy. A core memory is created, but this one is both yellow and blue, and the Family Island is recreated.
This mishap between Joy and Sadness, and Riley's confusion, was supposed to happen. Things get more complicated as you grow older, and rarely do we feel one single emotion at a time.
At the end of the movie, you see that all of Riley's core memories are multi-colored. And he has far more than five personality islands. Representing that, as you grow up, you grow a more developed personality, and more complicated emotions. Things get confusing. But, you should allow your true emotions to show. If you don't, you are just prolonging the inevitable. We can all take a lesson through Riley and her emotions, no matter how old we are.
