If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?
If I could switch lives with a famous person for one week, I would choose Dolly Parton.
I would need to clarify a few things first. Does the arrangement include her singing voice? Her songwriting ability? Someone who knows how all the hair works?
Because if I arrive with only my existing skills and access to her wardrobe, we are going to have a spectacularly dressed misunderstanding.
Naturally, I would want to investigate the clothes. I believe a woman should be permitted to enter a room looking as though she has personally negotiated a sponsorship with the stars. I would spend a completely reasonable amount of time admiring rhinestones.
Possibly Monday.
But the sparkle would only be the beginning.
What would it feel like to write a song that strangers carry through their lives? To put something deeply personal into words and discover that someone, somewhere, needed precisely those words?
That is the part of the swap I would be most curious about. I would want to experience the work itself: finding the line, hearing what belongs beside it, recognizing when something is finished. I would happily trade an afternoon of glamorous engagements for a chance to understand how a song takes shape in her mind.
Though I would prefer to keep the glamorous outfit on. It seems wasteful to change.
I would also want to learn about her Imagination Library, which gifts books to young children and was inspired by her father’s inability to read and write. There is something deeply moving about taking a difficulty someone you love experienced and building a way to give other people more possibilities.
That is the kind of work I would want a closer look at. How do you take an enormous, generous idea and make it happen? Who helps? What has to be learned, organized, funded, and done again tomorrow?
I suspect that portion of the week would require a notebook considerably larger than my evening bag.
And I would want to borrow a little of the confidence I see in her public presence—the willingness to be funny, feminine, ambitious, and unmistakably herself. I admire a woman who can take her work seriously while still enjoying the way she presents herself.
Of course, I am imagining this from the comfortable distance of someone who does not have her responsibilities. Fame might look rather different by Wednesday, when I wanted to go somewhere quietly and discovered that my face had already announced my arrival.
By Thursday, I might be hiding behind a very large hat.
Unfortunately, I suspect that would only strengthen the resemblance.
At the end of the week, I would want my own life back. I have words to write here, people I love, and something of my own that I’m still building.
But I would hope to return with a better understanding of how to help that work reach people—and the nerve to let it grow.
I would return the wigs. I would return the clothes.
I would be gracious about the shoes.
But if a little glitter remained in my suitcase, I would consider that professional development.
