We Should All Be More like Alice in Wonderland
Why you should jump down rabbit holes.
Lewis Carroll’s eternal novel Alice In Wonderland, published in 1865, is imprinted in the fabric of modern culture. The hallucinatory imagery, nonsensical stories, and dreamy poetry has captivated the minds of writers, artists, musicians, and storytellers from every generation since its release, leading to an endless stream of references and inspired works. Aged 21, I realized I had never read this influential story. So I did.
This article contains spoilers.
Reading Alice In Wonderland was a nostalgic experience. It shed a light on the increasing weight of responsibility and pressure to “prove myself” that has slowly accumulated as I’ve grown up. Lewis Carroll masterly captures the fun, carefree innocence of childhood in every detail ranging from the tone to the characters to the plot. We are all so distracted nowadays that we rarely dedicate time to becoming aware of ourselves and our growth. If these changes are as subtle as the tectonic shifts beneath us, Alice In Wonderland was the earthquake that awakened me from my trance.
The allegorical nature of the book opens it up to numerous interpretations. This article will focus on two main themes: curiosity and maturity.
The Argument For Curiosity
“In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast -
And half believe it true.”
- Excerpt from Alice In Wonderland
We live in polarizing, tribalistic times. Despite the rise in globalization and interconnected technologies, we are more isolated than ever. Each one of us is born into a certain tribe with certain traditions, conventions, and beliefs; our brains are cleaned with this dogmatic cloth from birth. Few escape. How can we? The gravitational pull of prejudice is so strong that it even penetrates the barriers of basic facts, even when lives are on the line (as COVID-19 has demonstrated). While there are various political and economic explanations to this phenomena, I propose a more fundamental cause: lack of curiosity.
Dictionary.com defines curiosity as “the desire to learn or know about anything”. I would add onto that “without the pursuit of self-interest”. Self-interest corrupts the pursuit of knowledge and makes us narrow-minded. Bertrand Russell describes it best:
“Self-assertion, in philosophic discussion as elsewhere, views the world as a means to its own ends; thus it makes the world of less account than Self, and the Self sets bounds to the greatness of its goods. In contemplation, on the contrary, we start from the not-Self, and through its greatness the boundaries of Self are enlarged; through the infinity of the universe the mind which contemplates it achieves some share in infinity” — The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
Self-interest tends to gain dominion over our minds as we grow older. We mask this insecurity as “responsibility”, “experience”, or “maturity”, but at our core we must never forget the value of pursuing something for its own sake.
Curiosity begins with keen observation. It is said that Leonardo Da Vinci once wrote “describe the tongue of the woodpecker” on his To Do list. Our instinctive reaction may be “Who cares?” but it is this attentive mindset that allowed Da Vinci to unlock the universe’s secrets and bathe in its wonders.
Similarly, Alice In Wonderland begins with Alice making an observation of a rabbit hurrying towards a large rabbit-hole while looking at its watch and talking to itself; “burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it … never once considering how in the world she was to get out again”. I genuinely believe that if this were to actually happen, most people would persuade themselves that they didn’t really see a talking rabbit and disregard the experience. Few may take a second glance. None will jump into the rabbit-hole.
Of course, this is a metaphor. Yet I’m convinced we all know the feeling of being “struck by inspiration” or having a “spark of an idea”. In our busy lives, we label these potential adventures as distractions, actively rejecting fun and fulfilling endeavors to “get back to work”. I agree that money is important to cover necessities and certain expenses like our children’s education. But beyond that, what is the value of an endless money-seeking grind compared with its costs on your essence as a human being?
Alice’s immediate pursuit symbolizes the importance of action. We can never know the value of our thoughts and ideas without attempting to flesh them out to their extreme. Every entrepreneur knows that ideas are easy, execution is difficult. It is by doing the difficult things that we gain new insights and grow beyond our limits. But make no mistake, pursuing inspiration is truly difficult and can get very confusing.
This is demonstrated in Alice’s episode with the size-shifting potion and cake. In her attempt to use a key to unlock a small door, she experiments persistently with various foods on a table. In the process, she shrinks as small as “only ten inches high” and grows as large as “more than nine feet high”. Nothing seems to make sense anymore and nothing is going according to Alice’s plan. Devastated, Alice even literally drowns in a pool of her own tears. The path is rarely straightforward. We will be rattled by the curves and bends ahead, but all we can do is keep trying.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard,” — John F. Kennedy
In this episode, among others, Alice also illustrates an amazing adaptability to empirical evidence. Time after time, Alice is surrounded by strange realities that contradict everything she knew to be true about the world. Instead of obstinately holding onto her prior beliefs, she activates her imagination and discovers the new rules of this new reality “For you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible”. Generation after generation, people with the courage to investigate and articulate their own rules went on to live truly extraordinary lives.
Think different.
What Is Growing Up, Really?
“Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood’s dreams are twined
In Memory’s mystic band,
Like pilgrim’s wither’d wreath of flowers
Pluck’d in a far-off land.”
- Excerpt from Alice In Wonderland
After a series of wonderful episodes, the novel ends right where it began. Alice wakes up “lying on the bank, her head in the lap of her sister”. No talking rabbits, no size-shifting potions, no personified playing cards.
It was all a dream.
One interpretation of this is that, because Alice’s adventures weren’t “real” and bear no consequences for her life, they were pointless. Simply a waste of time and effort. Translated to our metaphor, our fleeting ideas and inspirations are simply a trap, a distraction. We are much better off cutting the thread early and carrying on with our lives as usual.
This is the “mature” interpretation, one taking into consideration practical matters that children are so inexperienced in. We tend to measure a person’s maturity by a person’s proclivity to make decisions such as these in which we sacrifice fun for necessity, adventure for responsibility, risk for safety. By no means is this an hollow argument. In fact, the majority of the “adult” world operates under these calculations.
However, this is not necessarily mutually exclusive from having at least the spirit of a child, a mind filled with wonder. Below, I offer a competing interpretation of the ending.
Every truly great adventure ends where it began, except you are a different person and you see the world differently. This is a lesson echoed from the earliest works of literature such as The Odyssey (by Homer) and the earliest philosophers like Heraclitus.
“No man steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man” — Heraclitus
How has Alice changed since the beginning of this tale? For one, she has an amazing story that can grab the attention of everyone in any given room. Other than this, what has she really gained? She’s still the same girl on the same hill with the same childish worldview.
This line of thinking prioritizes action as a means to a separate end, rather than the action being an end in itself, another trait of “maturity”. A side effect of this is that we find it difficult to be present in our everyday lives. Every action is simply another step up an endless staircase. Once that action has been performed, we move on to next step, then the step after that. We replace our basic humanity with a mechanized flowchart that conforms to our societal systems.
Why is it that “mature” points of view so often correlate with cold-hearted, robotic, sacrificial decision making instead of unifying, hopeful, humanizing visions? Have you ever really contemplated that?
Perhaps it’s due to the limited nature of time and resources. Perhaps it’s due to our limited imagination.
I’ll leave the answer up to your imagination.
A Playful Pursuit Of Truth
Alice In Wonderland is by far the most playful book I have ever read. Every page I am mesmerized by the artful wordplay, metaphor, and Alice’s sublimely creative thought process. Of all the words that can describe this book, I think the one that best represents Carroll’s depiction of childlike wonder is playful, another idea commonly attributed to immaturity, refusing to conform to the tastes of “adults”.
It is a great shame that people lose their appetite for play when burdened by the endless erosion of “practical matters” that come with adulthood. It is also a great fear that the day will come when I shall lose mine. Despite the arguments explored in this article, I feel myself “maturing” with every year that goes by. I find myself growing more comfortable with “long-term calculations”, considering “viable career paths”, no longer able to ignore the niggling “necessity of income and stability”. I find myself examining the youth laughing at their immaturity rather than charmed by their incorruptibility.
At the tender age of 21, with my whole life ahead of me, I have but one wish: never to lose my playfulness.
Alice In Wonderland was just the earthquake I needed.
“The impartiality which, in contemplation, is the unalloyed desire for truth, is the very same quality of mind which, in action, is justice, and in emotion is that universal love which can be given to all, and not only to those who are judged useful or admirable. Thus contemplation enlarges not only the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with all the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man’s true freedom, and his liberation from the thraldom of narrow hopes and fears.” — The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
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