2023’s Wish is an unfocused, poorly crafted film, but it contains one of Disney’s most important messages.

A line from Ethan Hawke’s The Hottest State summarizes a nearly universal struggle: “. . . when you’re a kid, everyone, all the world, encourages you to follow your dreams. But when you’re older, somehow they act offended if you even try.” We all know this to be true. Think back to your elementary school experience. Remember the kids who wanted to explore astronomy and self-expression and art. The kids who wanted to change the world. Remember the parents and teachers and inspirational speakers who told you to shoot for the stars. They told you that you could be anything you wanted to be. They told you to dream big. The you-can-do-anything rhetoric was everywhere. It was inescapable.

Now, try to pinpoint the moment when people stopped telling you to dream big. For many of us, it was in high school around the time we started applying for colleges and jobs. Our well-intentioned guardians and counselors began to steer us toward practicality. They didn’t condemn our dreams at first; no, they suggested small adjustments to account for their perceptions of possibility. “Put it off for just a year.” “You can do that just as a hobby for now.” “At least have a backup plan.” “Try this first.” So we began to make concessions—small at first, perhaps, but the concessions grew. In size and number. We slowly chipped away at our once big, star-focused dreams until they became bite-sized—until they became something our mentors could digest comfortably.

This is a common story. But why? Are parents and teachers lying to elementary students about their potential? Are big dreams simply fables we tell kids—like Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy—to add a bit of fabricated excitement into their young lives? Or do guardians genuinely believe in lofty ambitions but second-guess themselves as their children grow up—so they instinctively fall back to the Alamo of digestible mediocrity?

Wish offers an answer: Big dreams are difficult and complicated. Life is simpler—and perhaps even happier at times—without them.

This is the initial motivation of Magnifico, Wish‘s villain. Magnifico’s characterization gets muddied as the film progresses—his intentions become less nuanced after the film’s first act—but his opening scenes offer a fascinating take on the reality of ambition. During his first interactions with Asha, the film’s young and admirably wide-eyed protagonist, Magnifico explains that people move to his city because they “can’t make their own dreams come true: the journey’s too hard, it is too unfair.” When Asha wonders if the citizens could try controlling their own destinies, Magnifico dismisses her supposed naivete: “Well, you’re young. You don’t know anything, really.”

Some background: King Magnifico is a sorcerer who created the kingdom of Rosas on an island in the Mediterranean Sea and promised happiness and prosperity to his citizens as long as each new citizen gave their wish (dream) to him. Citizens do not remember their abandoned wishes. Once a month, Magnifico grants the wish of a citizen. This monthly ceremony is widely celebrated until Asha learns that Magnifico has no desire to grant certain wishes.

Hidden within that plot is Magnifico’s genuine desire to help his citizens: “You’ve completely missed the point. . . . They give their wishes to me, willingly, and I make it so they forget their worries.” In the scene following that line, two new arrivals willingly give their wishes to Magnifico. “It’s a real weight off, isn’t it?” Magnifico says. And in the early stages of the film, Asha’s own grandfather echo’s Magnifico’s sentiments, growing angry when Asha tries to give him back a dream that he knows will likely not come true.

When Magnifico sings his part of “At All Costs,” then, he is not attempting to deceive Asha: he sincerely believes that he is protecting the dreams (and, by extension, the dreamers) from the harshness of reality. When he sings, “I will protect you at all costs / Keep you safe here in my arms,” he is expressing a desire to shelter his citizens from their own ambitions. Their dreams are beautiful, but their dreams are also dangerous. So, according to Magnifico, it’s better if the wishes are locked away and forgotten.

Ignore the last half of the film for a moment and consider how much this perception of Magnifico resembles the guardians, teachers, counselors, and friends who suggested that you change, alter, adapt, or delay your dreams. They wanted what is best for you, but they defined “best” in the context of predictability and practicality. Your dreams were beautiful, but they were also difficult and complicated. So they nudged you consistently toward a more simplistically blissful existence.

“It’s a real weight off, isn’t it?” they may have said when you passively took their advice.

But remember: Magnifico is the villain.

Wish argues (somewhat incoherently) that all individuals deserve the opportunity to follow their dreams—no matter how difficult, complicated, impractical, or unpredictable they may be. Wish asserts that robbing someone of that opportunity is an act of villainy. (Side note: This topic is complex: many individuals have obligations and circumstances that necessitate adaptation. And many guardians, teachers, and others are attempting to compassionately steer loved ones away from likely heartache. Caring for someone else is not easy. But when that love keeps someone from exploring their passions, it becomes problematic.)

The importance of this message cannot be overstated. We exist amid an epidemic of dreamlessness fueled by misguided pragmatism, and it will not get better until we face some hard truths. Well-intentioned or not, persuading someone to abandon or castrate their dream is regrettable. Consider this poem from Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Lofty ambitions are essential to life. Without them, we are not us. Without them, we have lost something that helps define who we are (i.e. a flightless bird or a barren field). Despite its thematic inconsistencies, Wish does a wonderful job of depicting this loss.

So what do we do? We push back. Following your dreams is not as simple as making a choice: it requires daily attention and energy. It’s like swimming upstream against a raging river—forever. Magnifico was right: dreams are a troublesome business. It’s much easier to forget them. So if you want to follow yours, you have to fight consciously and actively to keep them.

In Wish, the spirit of this fight is embodied by the song “Knowing What I Know Now.” As they sing, Asha and her friends prepare to challenge Magnifico and retrieve their dreams. The lyrics acknowledge the possibility of failure (“And who, who knows if we’ll succeed?”) while reinforcing the drive to try (“But we / Won’t stop and we won’t retreat or turn ’round”). In this way, “Knowing What I Know Now” operates as a Disney version of Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night“: it reminds us that dreams should not be given up easily.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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Ben Boruff is a co-founder of Big B and Mo’ Money. Read more at BenBoruff.com.