Notes from The Lion King

I rewatched The Lion King recently.

Well, not exactly recently. It’s a childhood movie I loved, and I’ve been going back to animation films I watched growing up. I love them because the music is always good, the stories are light, and there’s something freeing about a plot that isn’t trying to be heavy. But this one had more in it than I remembered.

Simba and the Weight of a Lie

Simba’s uncle Scar tricks him into believing he killed his own father, Mufasa. And that guilt is enough to make Simba run away. He goes far into the wilderness, finds Timon and Pumbaa, and builds a whole new life around not thinking about any of it.

He’s okay there. But he’s also not really himself.

And watching that, I kept thinking about how much of our hiding looks exactly like that. Not running to a jungle, but pushing parts of ourselves into the background because there’s too much guilt and shame wrapped around them. Carl Jung called this the shadow, the parts of who we are that we exile because they feel too unacceptable to hold (Jung, 1951). Not just the dark parts. Sometimes it’s our anger, our laziness, our uncertainty, things we were taught were wrong about us.

Simba’s shadow wasn’t that he actually killed his father. It was the part of him that believed he could have, that believed he was the kind of person capable of destroying what he loved. And so he hid from it.

My Version of the Wilderness

I’ve done something like this too.

There are things about myself I used to hold very tightly, things I was ashamed of that I didn’t want people to see. One of them was being lazy sometimes. Which sounds small, but it wasn’t. For a long time I would rather tie myself in knots performing effort than just say honestly that I didn’t want to do something.

But I started saying it out loud. Just matter of fact. “I’m not going to do that, I’m being lazy about it.” No big explanation around it.

A close friend told me he’s always a little amazed when I say that. He finds it really self-aware and honest. And I think it’s taken me a while to get here, to be able to say a thing like that without all the shame attached to it. It has made me freer. It’s made it easier to be honest with people about other things too, including at work, where I’ve slowly learned that saying “I don’t know” is not the same as saying “I’m not capable.”

The Part After Acceptance

What I found interesting about the movie is that Simba’s journey doesn’t end at acceptance. He doesn’t just make peace with himself and stay in the wilderness feeling better.

He goes back.

His father’s spirit reminds him who he is, and he finds the courage to return home, face Scar, face the truth, and take his place as king. That’s the part that takes real courage. Because accepting yourself is one thing. But then showing up, actually letting people see you, actually stepping into what you’re supposed to be doing, that’s a different kind of work.

And I think guilt and shame make that second step so much harder. They make you want to keep hiding even after you’ve done the inner work, because you’re still not sure people will accept the version of you that’s been in the wilderness.

What Grace Has to Do With It

I think what makes the return possible is grace. Not grace as in your mistakes don’t matter, but grace as in being human is not something to be ashamed of.

Simba didn’t kill his father. But even if he had done something genuinely wrong, the idea that one mistake or one shameful part of yourself disqualifies you from love or from being fully present in the world, that’s the lie shame tells. And when you start to see yourself more clearly, with both the strengths and the weaknesses, it becomes easier to stop hiding and easier to stop judging others too.

Jung wrote that the shadow doesn’t go away when you ignore it. It just goes underground and keeps influencing you from there (Jung, 1938). The only real way through it is to look at it, name it, and slowly let it be part of you without all the shame attached.

What the Movie Reminded Me

Simba saved his whole community by being willing to come back, by being willing to be seen and to take his place. And I think there’s something in that about what it costs the people around us when we stay hidden.

The hiding feels protective. But sometimes the most generous thing we can do is just show up as we actually are, lazy days and uncertain days and all of it, and let that be enough.

That’s what I walked away thinking about after watching a kids’ movie about lions.

Which honestly felt about right.