Beauty, Life and Good Advice

I have a pet peeve about advice: I feel annoyed when someone repeatedly asks for my advice and consistently does something else. Has that happened to you? I’ll only ask for advice from someone whose values align with mine or when their experience in the subject matter exceeds my own. Why ask if you are not going to take it?

In my opinion, the best advice-taker of all time is Esther. Who else can say they took good advice and with it became queen AND saved their nation? Add a dose of remarkable courage and you have the makings of a great Disney story. Don’t believe me? Consider this:

• Esther was a beautiful orphan girl raised by her cousin in a strange land. After all, what is a Disney movie without a dead parent or family member?
• In a separate plot, the king’s plot, you have a king who desires a beautiful wife who will respect him. Maybe leave out the respect part because Disney probably doesn’t value a man’s need for respect.
• Her cousin *recommends* she enter the harem to become Queen, but to keep her identity as a Jew a secret, and she agrees. Let’s call it a beauty pageant instead of a harem. What mom wants to explain a harem to her kid?
• She spends the next year getting primped and preened to win. Here’s where you have a song about beauty coming from within as a stark contrast to the external beauty focus of the treatments.
• Esther follows the *recommendations* of the head eunuch regarding the beauty treatments and wardrobe / accessory choices. Let’s call him the beauty advisor. What dad wants to explain a eunuch to his kid?
• As a result, she wins the “beauty pageant,” and becomes Queen. But the King doesn’t know her secret identity as a Jew. I sense another song about her joy of winning and her concerns about anyone finding out her secret identity.
• In the king’s plot, he has an evil official in his court who tricks him into writing a law to kill all of the Queen’s friends and family because the official hates the Jews. Here is where the king has a song about his power and how nobody can see him in his court without an invitation; otherwise, they will die unless he extends his scepter to them.
• Esther’s cousin tells her about the law and *recommends* she see the King, uninvited, even thought it might mean death. He says that she was perhaps made Queen for “such a time as this.” There is definitely a song here about her mustering up courage to approach the king and fulfill her destiny.
• She risks it all to see him; he receives her, and she lives! There is probably a song here, but I’m fresh out of song ideas.
• She invites the king and the evil official to dinner...twice! The first meal makes them comfortable and happy. The second meal, she reveals her secret identity and confronts the evil official.
• The king is so angry, he sends the evil official to the gallows, but this is Disney so let’s just say he falls off a building while running away from the guards.
• The king writes another law allowing all the Jews to take up arms to defend themselves and she saves her people. I envision a ballroom dance between the king and queen at this point with the cousin in the background smiling and all the Jews partying in the street.

In summary, she heeded her cousin’s recommendation to enter the pageant, she follows the recommendation of the pageant master regarding her beauty, and she followed her cousin’s recommendation to approach the king regarding the slaughter of her people. Had she decided to go her own way or do her own thing at any point in this story, she and all her kinsman would have died. Instead of a triumphal story, the story of God’s people, would have ended before the birth of Jesus. I’m thankful God chose Esther for this role, and she heeded the call.

Bottom line: surround yourself with good people who have wise advice and counsel...and then take it! You just don’t know the temporal or eternal consequences; it might even mean life or death. Choose life.

Oh, and if you decide to make a non-vegetable movie out of this, call me. I already have a couple of songs in mind.