What You See Is What You'll Get 

What You See Is What You'll Get 

02/14/24

One of my favorite musicals is The Man of La Mancha. It's the story of Don Quixote, written a long time ago, somewhere in the 1600s.

Old Don, he saw things a bit different than most. Lot of folks thought he was flat crazy. Maybe he was. He saw windmills as evil giants. He once turned a barber's basin upside down, pulled it down like a baseball cap, and called it a golden helmet. Saw his old horse as a trusty stallion. Thought the old inn was a castle and its innkeeper a lord. Lastly, he saw Aldonza, the inn's prostitute, as a virtuous lady. Pure. Unblemished. Radiant. 

She protested and told him that she was born on a pile of crap, what she called a dung heap, and she'll die on one too. Old Don didn't hear a word she said. Nope. He just shook his head and called her Dulcinea. Her real name. The name he gave her.

I believe Don Quixote saw things as God intended them, not as what they'd become. He said, "I come into a world of iron, to make a world of gold." I like that. Because he never gave up, Aldonza she began to see not only herself differently, but the whole world, too. Aldonza, like a caterpillar, became something new and different. Something clean. A butterfly...Dulcinea. All because some crazy windmill fighter convinced her that the mirror doesn't always tell the truth.