Get Kinky: It's Just About... Life - Life & The Sunday Series

You can always find great lessons in the most unusual places, if you are at least aware and ready to accept.

Going into a performance of Kinky Boots, the smash Tony-Award winning musical, I never thought I’d come out of the theater thinking about life. But sometimes a guy in high-top boots can do that to you. 🙂

The musical is about discovering your passion, conquering prejudice and surpassing stereotypes. I didn’t know that going in. From the surface you would think it’s a show about some drag queens, crazy boots and how they help save a man’s struggling family shoe business. Obviously it’s much more.

Kinky Boots presents drag queens as the musical’s spiritual leaders. These flamboyant drag queens (Lola and her Angels) meet their polar opposites, small-town traditionalists (Charlie and his employees). Together, the drag queens and the conservatives fight for freedom and acceptance and triumph over adversity.

And for anyone who hasn’t seen it, I’m not here to give it all away. But the takeaway would be this. At the end of the show is an inspirational get-up-off-your-ass-and-dance song called, “Raise You Up / Just Be”. In that song they talk about 12 life lessons, the 12-step program:

Yes, but what you can do in 12, I want you to know that we all can do in 6 now, and it goes like this:
One: Pursue the truth
Two: Learn something new
Three: Accept yourself and you’ll accept others too!
Four: Let love shine
Five: Let pride be your guide
Six: Change the world when you change your mind!
Just be. Who you wanna be.
Never let them tell you who you ought to be.
Just be. With dignity.
Celebrate your life triumphantly.
You’ll see.
Its beautiful.

Life is beautiful. Especially when you can be entertained and learn, or be reminded of some lessons to live by at the same time. But there’s one more lesson to impart. And take heed. At the end of the show, don’t walk up to your 15-year-old daughter and tell her how much you enjoyed the musical and then say “what about those life lessons at the end?”

I did just that and she showed me her boots – were made for walking – walking away. Ah, the joys of being a dad.

Lesson learned 🙂 But I won’t be deterred, instead I will get out there and get kinky.

You would be wise to do the same.