So total surprise, got a call from mom at 4:30 last Thursday, "aren't you having a girls' night out tonight". "Yea," I say, "we're going to dinner." "Want to go see WICKED instead?" "What? Of course!" And then, there we were with the worst best seats at WICKED. Stoked. Beyond stoked.
Absolutely one of the best shows I've ever seen, and I've seen quite a few. Among my top two for sure. And the scene Defying Gravity is the best scene of a show EVER, musically, technically, etc. I'm a techie nerd when it comes to shows, I watch the lights & the set changes, and I'm so critical and look for mistakes, etc. This was an amazing technical show!
But so here's the thing, it's also an AMAZING story. I'm a huge fan of out-of-the-box stories. Anyone (well maybe not anyone) can write a great love story and set it in war-torn and class-impacted France (Les Mis). Or a love story set amongst racial Russian families (Fiddler). And even stories like RENT, that are very out-of-the-box, but tout really political and social agendas aren't nearly as enticing to me.
But this...this crazy story of what if's. I am not just in love with this show, I'm in love with Gregory Macguire (the guy who wrote the book, Wicked:The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch). I mean really, this is how my brain works. Like him, I could watch the Wizard of Oz, and then wonder for the rest of the night, how did she become so Wicked, and why was she green? And he wrote the story. And it's genius.
But really, on a spiritual level, here's why it's so genius...not only does he wonder to write the answers to these questions, but he goes so far as to create a story where the "Wicked" witch is entirely GOOD! She wasn't wicked at all, she was moral, brave, courageous and does the right thing by everyone to the very end. And she was someone who life set out from the beginning to be against.
What if we lived our life like that? Seriously, how many people TODAY did you write off b/c they were different, unusual or too much for you to deal with? How many people did you stereotype as mean, cruel, evil or just plain "bad"? What if you were wrong? What is that persons' backstory? What if their entire life is based on their attempts to be good, but at the points your lives intersect, your perspective on their life is bad.
What if you could live life assuming that everyone wants to do good at heart? Or at the very least, has the potential to be good at heart? What if you started treating people that way? No more stereotyping, no more writing anyone off. Everyone gets treated the same, with love & respect, as if you understand that they are only trying to do their best by what they believe. What if you showed everyone LOVE? Hmmm....sounds like someone else I know, someone I try to be like every day.....yet fail miserably at. (I'll keep on trying, JC)
Try an experiment. Spend a day thinking about everyone that you encounter and that they have a back story, a personal story, that's nothing like what you think or know. How does that change how you treat them, how you interact with people? What if you treated everyone as if they were all GOOD at heart? Can you do it? Does it make a difference for you? It does for me!
It's brilliant.
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