“We’re all mad here!”
It all starts when we fall down the rabbit hole, doesn’t it?
In 2004, a documentary called “What the (bleep) do we know?” asked the question, “How deep down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?” The film itself presented many interesting theories about our purpose, where we come from, and the nature of reality. But of course, there is no way Lewis Carroll could even suspect his story would inspire a philosophical, quantum physics movie 139 years later… especially since films hadn’t even been invented.
“Alice in Wonderland” was born as a personalized story that the writer told to a little girl. This very surreal book is just an example of how far—and, sometimes, extremely weird—things can go when telling someone a story inspired, customized and worded just for them. It’s almost like it makes inspiration and creativity bloom in the most unexpected ways. There’s nothing like a good pair of real listening ears to inspire the best of stories—and often the wackiest, too. However, like all good stories, this book has several levels. We could say it shows two sides of reality: one side shows us how totally absurd the adult world and adult rules look to a child, while the other almost touches on the surreal side of fantasy, which goes perfectly fine with a child’s mind—always open to new things—but which would make an adult think he/she’s going crazy.
While the book could be taken as just another children’s story, it can seriously make you think when you take a closer look at it. And the deeper you go down that rabbit hole by “looking closer”, the more it makes you think, even from the moment Alice starts getting bored because the book her older sister is reading has no interesting pictures in it. If the kind of life we’re living has no “interesting pictures” in it, chances are we’ll end up trying to find them somewhere else sooner or later. That’s where the adventure begins. And, since there are many kinds of “pictures” that people tend to go after to get away from a meaningless way of life, I’ll leave this part to the reader’s interpretation. However, when looking for those pictures elsewhere, we don’t always like what we find. Alice herself certainly didn’t when she found herself trapped at the end of the cave, almost drowned in her own tears. From this she learned that it’s important to keep swimming because one can always find the way out in the end.
As Alice progresses in her journey through this weird new world, and after being asked questions like “who are you?”, she finds it hard to tell who she really is anymore. Or if she’s big or small. Growing and shrinking from eating the cake and drinking the potion makes her totally lose any kind of perspective. Then again, our identity is not defined by measurements or numbers of any kind. Absolem, the blue caterpillar, seemed to know a great deal about this since he found his own tiny size perfect, whatever Alice thought about it.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
The only truth about this famous riddle, is that no one has the slightest idea. A riddle with no real answer, made that way on purpose. The Hatter tells Alice this riddle, in the same way a Zen master would use a koan with his disciples. The master asks a question with no answer, such as, “What is the sound of just one hand clapping?” These mind-blowing paradoxes are supposed to catapult you into another dimension—in other words, to give you instant enlightenment; and in his own way, the Mad Hatter certainly does this in more than one scene. In the same way that the Mad Hatter looks absolutely bonkers, the illuminated master may appear to common people as some kind of “fool on the hill” or in some cases downright crazy; however, the truth is, he is not crazy. His reality is just different from yours. Just one more thought on the Hatter—everyone should celebrate their un-birthday with a wild mad tea-party. After all, we only have 364 days a year to celebrate!
And what could we say about the mysterious and sneaky Cheshire Cat? The appearing and disappearing cat who is just a grin in the sky. Almost like another Zen master, reminding us with his intermittent presence, that everything is and is not, both at the same time—and this is beginning to sound like some existential quantic theory.
In short, Alice’s adventures remind us how reality gets more and more strange, the closer you look at it. Just like dreams—who said our lives are not a dream too? The further we get inside the rabbit hole, the weirder and more surreal things get. So, how did we get here? “Who are YOU?” (Says Absolem, sitting on his mushroom smoking his pipe) We’re all mad here… Oh, so you’re not mad, you say…? Well… if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, would you…?
