What if you’re wrong?

9:15 AM 0 Comments

Think about one of your core beliefs, it can be something that guides who you are, or how you make decisions, or how you see the world. What would you do if you find out you were wrong? Or even just realized you can’t be sure about it anymore? How would you react? How would you handle it?

Those questions were what drew me to Madhuri Shekar’s play Queen. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things that I love about this play: it’s nerdy, it’s about science, the protagonist happens to be* an immigrant woman of color, it deals with important contemporary topics, and, as a dramaturg, there are lots of research to do. But I consider these questions, about what we do when we find out that what we believe may be wrong, the heart of this play.

We’ve all gone and will go through this in our lives. It is not easy, especially if it is something we have believed or known for a long time. We may lash out at the messenger, deny the things that contradict our views, ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist, do everything in our power to prove that we are right. Or maybe, just maybe, we can acknowledge that we were wrong, learn, and evolve. It will never be easy to let go of something, especially an idea, we hold dear, but we must do it to get closer to the truth.

Changing our mind or our beliefs is hard, and many times it comes at a cost. Sometimes it’s small, like just admitting we were wrong, but sometimes it comes at a higher price, like losing a relationship, a community, a temporary sense of self. But, in the end, we are getting closer to the truth and to understanding the world, to understanding each other, and to truly understanding who we are. We just need to be willing to pay the price, and that can be the hardest question we will ever have to answer: Is it worth it and are we willing to pay the price?

A Billy Joel lyric keeps coming to mind:


We will be both throughout our lives. We need to remember that. And as long as we keep an open mind and an open and kind heart, we will be able to survive either.

PS – Come see Queen by Madhuri Shekar.

*Please note the word choice. The difference, for me, between an <adjective> character and a character who happens to be <adjective> is where the focus of the story is. In the former, it’s the <adjective> that mainly informs who the character is, whereas in the latter, the <adjective> is just a part of who the character is. Both types of stories have their place in our world, I just believe we don’t see enough stories of the latter.