Wicked Friends...and Enemies
Truth becomes known
Film: Wicked (2024)
Screenwriters: Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox, Gregory Maguire
Director: Jon M. Chu
Based on the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire (and the story The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
Starring: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Michelle Meoh, Jeff Goldblum
Dear Friends (and Enemies?),
Recently I came across this post on social media by the yogi Sadghuru. I just love that guy. I have tried out my own attempts to look yogi-like by wearing beards and talking to a camera and saying yogic things, but it doesn’t have the same twang as Sadghuru, ya know?
(Would I have more prestige in life with a beard? I always wonder!)
Anyway, Sadghuru says in this clip that not everyone who helps you is your friend, and not everyone who craps all over you is your enemy. (He meant crap metaphorically.)
We have a way—as the wild, complicated humans we are—of dividing people into sides. We especially have this problem of “two sides.” Good and bad. Right and wrong. Add to that, an American culture mired in politics, where two parties dominate, and we all get lost in the mess of these polarity/binary crazes, thinking there are only two ways to act or be in any situation. It puts us in a continual battle zone, and the battle lives inside each of us, most of all.
This two-sidedness in life is not inherent truth, but it is comforting to our minds, ay? It makes life easy to compartmentalize, and we can then assert the narrative we like best. Winner and loser. Do-gooder and evil person. On the other hand, what if a person doesn’t like us, or isn’t like us, but that person is just a person, and not subject to a superficial label of “friend” or “enemy”? Facebook culture has kind of decimated our understanding of friendship anyway. We may call anyone a friend, just because we’re connected to them on an internet app. But it doesn’t mean they love us, or show up for us when we need kindness and a place to stay.
The reason I say all this is because the movie Wicked examines the way we perceive normalcy, and goodness, and friendship, and, well, wickedness. Without giving away the ending of Wicked (because it’s so good!), I can tell you that the story forces us to question and reckon with our own personal discernment and integrity.
(I keep attributing these big ideas to movies wrapped up in pink and glitter. Barbie—last year’s feminist utopia—and now Wicked, a movie that helps point us toward our own power of discernment. Both are high-grossing films. Pink—and also green—for the win-win?)
The path of a unique individual—one who decides to think and keep thinking for herself—is to have an internal compass, and to abide by it. It may mean that her decisions are different than other people’s, and she may have to endure a lot of negativity and bullying, slander and smear campaigns, or being misunderstood. But even that darling Jesus says to us, in his magnum opus of a testament, “What good is gaining the whole world, my child, if you lose your very own soul?”
(I added the “my child” part, because it sounds like something your grandma would tell you.)
He makes such a good point. What is the point of riches, power, and getting what you want, if you lose integrity, ethics, and your own connection to what matters most in a meaningful life? So much outside and around us can change, and we have no control over other people’s actions. We can control our own, however. We can make choices about what we will abide, what we will do, and what we will say or not say. The most radical thing now and always, has been to choose love, forgiveness, and peacefulness instead of hatred and division and negativity, which is unfortunately so commonplace…and deceitfully alluring.
It is regrettably true: People can get attacked or bullied when they act in love, forgiveness, kindness, and peacefulness. People can get rich and “popular” by doing what some guy or gal in a suit tells them to do, for the sake of money or status quo.
What matters more to you, my reader? Your soul, your dignity—or your popularity? When it comes time to choose—if you have to choose—which do you choose?
Caroline Myss, mystical and spiritual teacher, says that you know you are making progress on your spiritual path when you are no longer betraying yourself.
What does it feel like when you make a hard choice not to betray yourself, but it means losing friends and “followers” and perhaps still, weirdly, influencing people?
Were they enemies, or friends, or just students of life and magic?
This is the question green-skinned Elphaba (played by the beautiful Cynthia Erivo) faces, as the central figure in the film Wicked. Elphaba, in this movie, doesn’t betray herself, and for that she is on the outside. She actually grows to like it there.
So—
Choosing your own unique path, and not succumbing to the pressures of popularity and prestige may be called wicked by those with popularity and prestige.
But to your soul? It’s called wisdom.
Heeeee heeeeee heeeee! Haaaaa haaaaa haaaaaa haaaa!
(Don’t worry, I won’t take your pretty dog—I prefer my comfy cat.)
The film Wicked is great for the whole family! Hope you get to see it, you Decemberists.
Sincerely,
Ms. Wonderful