To me, it's about remembering yourself and forgetting yourself.
Chihiro's parents forget themselves, and Chihiro almost forgets who she is when she gets her first job, and Granny Soup uses her magic power to make her forget who she is not Chihiro Ogino, but Kodachi. If her name was taken away from her, she wouldn't remember the way home. Luckily, Kohaku was there all the time, reminding her of who she was, and that's how she was able to have a happy ending in the end, I guess.
She knew she had to survive and bring her parents home. That's why she listened to Xiaobai, pleaded with Grandpa Boiler to take care of her, and asked Granny Tong to give her a job; that's why she could do her job with all her heart and soul after she cried; that's why she could ask Granny Tong for her own request to bring her parents back to the human world.
She did it. Step by step, this dream-like experience is the success of chasing a dream, seemingly fantastical, but rightfully so.
The river god, who has become filthy for various reasons and is treated as a plus-size god of decay, the bathhouse is unwilling to receive unless it has to. Facing the frogs that waved their lanterns and kept shouting please go back, take the day off, it still insisted on moving forward. While Chihiro once forgot who he was, the river god never lost himself, and insisted on moving forward to his goal even when every step was difficult.
Being arranged to give the dirtiest guests with a large bathroom, but also did not complain, wash themselves clean, to help themselves pull out the silt Chihiro dark-colored pills, in the help of their own clean bathroom to leave the gold.
That fate is even more ill-fated, as long as you never forget yourself, there is always a time to turn around.
If Chihiro forgets who he is, he may be so controlled by fate, at the mercy of Granny Tang to be a bathhouse maid; if the river god in all the gods think he is a rotten god when he sank, he may really be reduced to a stinking lump of mud, and then there may be no one to pull out the thorns in his body for him; how about you? Slowly handing over the dreams you once talked about to the cruelty of reality, telling yourself that it can't be done or that it's hard to do? Why