If you would have told me before Wonderland that it was so easy to slip off into another place, far from anything that made any sense, I probably would have told you that you were indeed tripping. But after chasing a white rabbit into a hole to find myself falling straight into a world where everything felt real, but looked and sounded like imagination, I stand as an example.
There is a place where creatures and people seem a little “off” and in this weirdly poetic place where connecting the dots was a difficult adventure, I learned a lot from the personalities I met along the way. These are life lessons I feel worth sharing so maybe some of you can understand the profoundness of what Wonderland was really like.
Mad Hatter
The Hatter told me this as he pointed to my heart. At first, it didn’t hit me, but soon after I realized what he was trying to say in his own kooky, nonsensical way. He was reminding me that I was letting the situation of being trapped in Wonderland rob me of my once big heart. The message? Keep yourself in check when you are in a predicament, it can change you into someone you do not want to be.
After falling to the bottom of a long passageway and finding myself surrounded by doors, one doorknob brought it to my attention that I was too big to pass through. “Sorry, you’re much too big. Simply impassible.” Of course, I made the assumption that he meant impossible, but was quickly corrected with: “No, nothing’s impossible.” This is a message to carry throughout life. Things may be impassible, but never impossible. Situations can be difficult to pass through, but there are always ways to make something possible; to change the perspective and make it work.
When I first bumped into the Cheshire Cat, I was appalled at the mention of going to see the Mad Hatter, but the Cat quickly let me in on a secret: There is no reason to be afraid of those who you hear are a little crazy. Everyone is a little mad in Wonderland, but it is actually just the same in real life, is it not? We all have our own tidbits of individual thinking that may seem crazy to the next 
person, but that is just what makes us unique. So, really, there’s no reason to fear people who are a little different because we all are different. On the flip side of this important message, there is a darker connotation, however. If everybody’s a little crazy, how can you find people who are the same level of crazy as you and how do you know who could be crazy enough to steal your happiness?
The message here from the Queen of Scary herself is simple. You should never stop believing in impossible things. It is good to wonder, question, and look for a little magic in the world. Otherwise, you live life in a dull and drab place. Now the Queen of Hearts was her own special kind of crazy, so just as much as you should always believe in the impossible, you should also know that there will always be those people who are eager to lose their temper and proclaim, “Off with their head!”
On the edge of a new Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland coming soon in May, I have to wonder what kind of spin he will take on my story. I can’t wait to see if he includes the same valuable life lessons, both dark and endearing. I may be good at giving myself good advice, but I very seldom follow it, so I hope that you can learn something from my Wonderland excursion and all those who were a little crazy, but incredibly insightful that I met on my adventure.
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