So much can be said about Dolly Parton. And right now, so much is being said.
Businessperson. Songwriter. Movie star. Philanthropist. Rock star. Country star. Sex symbol. Humanitarian. Artist. Christian.
It’s a remarkable list.
But for all the accolades, all the success, and all the things Dolly Parton was and represented, I think what I admired most was that she never seemed to forget where she came from.
She was born poor. Really poor. She found her way from the mountains of East Tennessee to a life most people couldn’t dream up if they tried.
And through all of it, she believed.
Her faith was one of the things I loved most about her. She didn’t shy away from it, but she also didn’t use it as a weapon. She spoke openly about what she believed while somehow leaving plenty of room for other people to believe differently.
That seems increasingly rare.
The same was true of politics. Dolly wouldn’t take the bait. She didn’t seem interested in adding another voice to whatever argument everyone else was having. She knew who she was, she spoke her mind, and she could be wonderfully blunt. But she never seemed to think it was her job to tell the rest of us what to think.
There was a humility to her.
An honesty.
And, maybe most importantly, she never seemed to take herself too seriously.
I grew up with Dolly Parton. She was everywhere. She was on television constantly, often the butt of jokes about her appearance and, of course, certain famous assets.
She knew exactly what people were doing.
And she knew exactly how to roll with it.
The teasing. The flirting. The jokes.
She could be in on the joke without ever becoming the joke.
What a lady.
I pay tribute to Dolly because, if I’m being completely honest, hers is the kind of career and life I would have dreamed of living.
Not because I secretly wanted to wear rhinestones and sing country music. Although who knows.
It’s because she got to be all of it.
A serious businessperson and an artist. A songwriter and a movie star. A philanthropist and an entertainer. A person of faith who could welcome people who didn’t share it. Someone enormously famous who still seemed connected to where she started.
She didn’t choose one box.
She became Dolly.
And then there are the songs.
The songs.
“I Will Always Love You.” “Here You Come Again.” “Islands in the Stream.” “9 to 5.”
There is such realness in her songwriting. For all the hair, rhinestones, glamour, and showmanship, the songs themselves could be remarkably human. She understood love and longing and heartbreak, and she knew how to put those things into words that belonged to everybody once she sang them.
I never saw Dolly perform live, and I’m very sorry about that.
I never got the chance to meet her, either.
And yet, like so many people, I somehow felt like I knew her.
Maybe that was one of her greatest talents.
For someone larger than life, she never felt very far away.
I loved Dolly Parton. I still love Dolly Parton.
And the more I think about the life she created, the more I think there’s something worth carrying forward from it.
Believe in something.
Know where you came from.
Say what you mean.
Don’t let people bait you into becoming someone you’re not.
Take your work seriously, but maybe don’t take yourself quite so seriously.
Be a lot of things if you want to be a lot of things.
And when the world tries to put you into a box, rhinestone the hell out of the box until it looks like yours.
Dolly Parton was a lot of things.
I just think she was close to perfect.