I might be crazy for this, but ‘Where You Are’ from Moana always makes me emotional, I think it’s deeper than people realise at first

I just got to rant because I see this song get a lot of rightly deserved credit for how damn catchy it is, but I can’t help but feel the depth is overlooked. As someone who grew up with overprotective parents this song fucking speaks to me. Through charting Moana growing up it gives us the classic example of well meaning parents trying to keep you safe accidentally limiting who you are as a person.

The song starts with Moana’a father and tribe singing to her the benefits of staying safe and having a comfortable life. Her people chant rules and traditions at her in the background while her father tells her what’s expected of her as she grows up in the foreground, and above all, that she never leaves the island. Like the old saying goes though, a ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what a ship is made for. Moana deep down is called to a life beyond her little community, and yet even from a young age she’s pressured to stay, not leave ever, and just accept happiness ‘where you are’.

But her grandmother offers her a different way, even though the rest of the village don’t agree. Life isn’t about being safe and comfortable in a place forever, it’s about going with the flow with the waves. She turns the message of finding happiness ‘where you are’ on its head; she instead tells Moana to find what she is passionate about in life, find out what she likes, and when she does, ‘there you are’.

Happiness isn’t a place or safety or comfort. It comes from something within, different for everyone. And that difference is exactly who we are as people. And so by the end of the song Moana sings about staying with her people, guiding them, staying at home, singing about finding happiness right ‘where you are’. But the thing is, the meaning is different now. She says ‘you can find happiness right where you are’, and while on a surface level that seems to talk about finding happiness where you’re born and settling, we know that Moana doesn’t believe anymore she should just settle and find happiness wherever she happens to be stuck, but instead she aims to find it wherever in the world she happens to be. To quote yet another saying, ‘wherever you go, there you are’. She wants to find happiness wherever she is, not just in one place and in one rigid structure. The message has changed from you can only be happy in one place, to no matter where you end up, you can find happiness.

That was a hard lesson I had to learn growing up. I was always grateful to my parents for providing so much for me, but often I didn’t match up to their hopes for me growing up, they got overprotective despite meaning well, and it took me a long time to learn to listen to myself, ignore the pressure, go with the flow and pursue happiness no matter where I am or what I happen to be doing. And to have such a profound, adult truth buried in a Disney song made to be exposition for a children’s movie is fucking crazy to me. I honestly almost got brought to tears the first time I ever watched it with my niece and didn’t quite understand why, and the more I thought about it the more I realised this was why. Honestly a beautiful message.

submitted by /u/Mr_Jek
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/o98m78/i_might_be_crazy_for_this_but_where_you_are_from/