Truth Or Dare: Adult Edition

I scanned my text thread searching for recent dares wondering if I'm more speak-my-truth than I-dare-you these days? I Truth or Dared myself into taking a new sustainable project management certification exam this month. I dared to give myself enough time to study. I did not. We'll know in a couple of months how this challenge turned out. I'll let you know.

What I discovered in text messages was a friend daring me to listen to Beyoncé's Renaissance album and not dance. I dared folks to watch the PBS “WE WANT THE FUNK!” documentary and not get out of their seats and dance. (There's a theme developing.)

I texted my bestie: “Can you think of the last time someone dared you to do something?”

"Well yes, but more in a 'how dare you' way haha."

"I feel I sort of dared myself to do the Spartan challenge this past year."

"But to your point, no I can't."

Same. We rarely as adults get dared into actions. "I dare you!"—the persuasive motivation technique from youth that got us to mix cooking sherry and lemons, plug our nose, and drink it—has been set down or replaced with other more subtle "say it, or do it" frameworks.

Like my Spartan bestie, I dared myself to a physical limit by training for a half-marathon and completing it last summer. Impulse buying running events is something I've done more than once. Whereas, I'll never accept an "I dare you not to dance" challenge. I'm bound to lose.

I'd rather spit truth than stand still. Which is funny because my physical therapist chides me for not standing up every 20 minutes. I'm sitting in front of a computer for too long which makes my back hurt and that cuts into my dancing time. I'm loving Madison McFerrin's latest album right now. Beyoncé stays in heavy rotation too.

Rebecca Singer, one of my high school theater teachers, told me that I ‘say what others are thinking but don't say out loud.’ She might say articulating the truth isn't necessarily welcomed or appreciated. I received her curt dismissal of me as a compliment, despite how she might have intended it. That's teen hubris for you. I know she didn't mean it as a compliment—the body language of the hand to her forehead, like we pained her, was her tell.

The thread connecting Rebecca and I to Truth or Dare was the original play she wrote and directed, called Marilyn / Madonna, where she cast me as "Alice," an audience member. The play-sical straddled both icons' origin stories, included dance numbers set to “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” and “Vogue,” and featured a Greek chorus of opinionated spectators perched in modified box seats—characters who defended or condemned the controversial icons.

"What kind of show is this? I had no idea my daughter would be prancing around on stage half-dressed: This is a high school," said Charles.

My character Alice brought the truth. "Excuse me, but no matter where you live, you and your kids are influenced by these two women…"

Rebecca was annoyed during our Saturday scene study classes, a handful of seniors meeting in her living room to break down our monologues and character development, when my undiagnosed ADHD blurted out the truth, but ironically she relied on my ability to drop truth and articulate the central construct of her play.

Years later, circa 2004, I'd find myself working as Madonna's manager's assistant—on tour, project managing the business of Madonna. Children's books, video shoots, fragrance development, tour merch, the daily coordination of an empire built on daring to be seen. There's a photo somewhere from a concert: fans wearing a shirt that says "Hasina Does It Better," a riff on our "Madonna Does It Better" tour merch. I was 20-something, managing chaos, coordinating desires, making the impossible happen on impossible timelines. Rebecca underestimated me.

There was another line Alice delivered later in the play—one that didn’t land as hard in a high school auditorium as it does now:
“We’re in the middle of a society that is in chaos. It’s time we quit pretending everything is okay.”

She was right. She still is.

As adults, our dares are subversive—the toxic workplace dares you not to flip a table in a meeting. We're dared to keep showing up to fight fascism and disrupt tyranny. We're daring to be seen showing up in bodies that wear out and betray us. Maybe for that reason, I struggled a little with this month's theme: There is a classic nostalgic truth or dare appeal but unless you're a young Johnny Knoxville or Logan Paul, you don't get explicitly dared into action when you're an adult adulting.

I can't speak for my entire generation, but if I have to choose between Madonna's 1991 Truth or Dare documentary which turns 35 this year, or Blumhouse's 2018 Truth or Dare horror film, I'll pick Madge's every time—because our collective reality already feels like a daily human rights horror anthology where we are living in a giant non-consensual dare, being forced to adapt, perform, decide, or respond amidst instability you did not choose and cannot pause. This level of cattywampus definitely makes me nostalgic for the youthful spin the bottle version of truth or dare, which was dual parts anxiety producing and thrilling.

What else compares? Training for the half-marathon I wasn't sure I'd be physically conditioned enough to finish was dual parts anxiety and adrenaline. Clicking on an AI-generated animal video that's too cute and ill-proportioned to be real—it's thrilling and anxiety producing because now your feed will be flooded with 9ft silver owls perched on the arm of a granny who's dancing at a wedding, a safer level of cattywampus.

We need nostalgia, good adrenaline, and a safer level of cattywampus to survive our current reality.

When a colleague dares you to set firm boundaries, you'll accept the challenge. You'll either leave work as you indicated and pick up your kids on time—or do what? You love them, they are your legacy. You're not about to dare them to find their own way home. You'll silently dare your colleague to mention the scheduling rub passively or aggressively in the future. The truth is, you'd prefer that they forgo any passive yin or aggressive yang and just address scheduling matters directly: Grace can go both ways. You neither want them staying up until 4am (we're working across timezones in an interconnected global economy) for a meeting, nor do you want to miss after school and dinner hour—the dare has to be to find a compromise or give an earnest pass.

A neighbor invited me to check out a Grateful Dead tribute band sometime, and it felt like a dare—one entirely of my own making. When I learned Bob Weir had passed, I sent him my sincere condolences via text. He replied, “If you have the chance, you should come out to a dead tribute show sometime! I’m playing as the ‘bobby’ in my own dead tribute band, and we have a show coming up next month.”

My neighbor is a delightful 21st-century, guitar-playing troubadour who, when he’s not legit jamming (either solo or with an ensemble) or giving guitar lessons in his apartment, sells herbs online that enhance lucid dreaming. Reread that sentence. It’s all true.

And next month, when my neighbor is Weiring out, “playing as the Bobby,” I’ll be there—dare accepted—expecting to be moved to dance by the Dead, making up for an entire day of forgetting to stand every twenty minutes.

Cue “I'm That Girl” or “Who’s That Girl.’”

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‍Hasina is a generalist with a specialist’s attention span. A certified project manager, communications strategist, and former pop music manager, she is also a neurodivergent storyteller who believes most human systems could be improved—with more honesty, more humor, and a few well-placed Venn diagrams. She approaches complex communications challenges with one guiding principle: understand deeply and explain simply. Hasina is committed to making professional spaces more inclusive—one impactful project, one empowering message, and, when necessary, disrupting outdated stereotypes (one or several at a time).

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