Alice in Wonderland: Finding Your Way When Nothing Makes Sense

 There is something about Alice in Wonderland that becomes much more relatable as an adult. As a child, I saw a strange and colorful world filled with talking animals, disappearing cats, a tea party that never ended, a frantic White Rabbit, and a Queen who seemed determined to solve every problem by shouting, “Off with their heads!” It was wonderfully bizarre, which was probably exactly what made it entertaining. But watching Alice wander through Wonderland as an adult, I see something entirely different. I see someone trying to find her way through a world that doesn't make sense while everyone around her seems perfectly comfortable with the nonsense.

I think adulthood feels a little like Wonderland sometimes. We spend our childhood believing that eventually we will grow up and understand how everything works. Adults seem to have answers. They know where they are going, what they are doing, and what comes next. Then we become adults ourselves and discover that most people are figuring things out as they go. Life changes without asking permission. Plans fall apart. People behave in ways we don't understand. Doors close. Unexpected ones open. We make decisions without knowing whether they are the right ones, and sometimes we find ourselves looking around wondering how exactly we ended up here.

Alice begins her adventure by following the White Rabbit, and there is something wonderfully familiar about that too. Curiosity gets her moving before she has any idea where she is going. One moment she is sitting beside her sister, and the next she is falling down a rabbit hole into a world she never knew existed. Isn't that how some of life's biggest changes happen? We rarely know when an ordinary moment is about to become the dividing line between before and after. One phone call, one decision, one diagnosis, one opportunity, one loss, one unexpected event, and suddenly we are living in a world that looks nothing like the one we woke up expecting.

I think one of the most interesting things about Alice is how desperately she tries to understand the rules of Wonderland. She wants things to make sense. She asks questions. She tries to apply logic to situations that aren't logical at all. Everyone she meets seems to have their own version of reality, and most of them aren't particularly interested in helping her understand it. The more Alice tries to make sense of everything, the stranger everything seems to become.

I understand that desire for answers. When something unexpected happens, one of my first instincts is to understand it. If I can understand why something happened, perhaps I can figure out what to do about it. If I can gather enough information, ask enough questions, research enough possibilities, and create some kind of plan, maybe I can make uncertainty feel a little less frightening. There is comfort in believing that everything has an explanation we can eventually uncover.

But life doesn't always give us one.

There are questions we may carry for years. There are things that happen that simply don't make sense from where we are standing. There are prayers that aren't answered the way we expected, relationships that change without the closure we wanted, and circumstances that leave us asking why long after everyone else has stopped asking with us. Sometimes we can spend so much energy trying to understand why we are in Wonderland that we forget we still have to figure out how to walk through it.

Alice also spends much of the story changing size, and I think there is something surprisingly meaningful about that. One moment she is too big for the room and the next she is impossibly small. She never seems to be quite the right size for wherever she happens to be. I think many of us know what it feels like to wonder whether we fit. Sometimes we make ourselves smaller because we are afraid of taking up too much space. We become quieter, hide parts of our personalities, apologize for our opinions, or try to become whatever we think the room expects us to be. Other times we desperately try to become bigger, stronger, more successful, more impressive, or more confident because we believe who we already are isn't enough.

Maybe one of the lessons adulthood eventually teaches us is that we shouldn't have to constantly change our size to fit every room. Sometimes the problem isn't that we are too much or not enough. Sometimes we are simply standing somewhere that was never meant to define us.

That makes the Caterpillar's question to Alice especially interesting: Who are you? Alice struggles to answer because she isn't entirely sure anymore. So much has happened since she entered Wonderland that she feels as though she has changed several times already. I think there are seasons of life when that question becomes difficult for us too. We know who we used to be, but circumstances have changed us. Roles we once held disappear. Relationships change. Careers change. Our bodies change. People we love need us in different ways. Sometimes life changes so much that we look at ourselves and wonder where the person we used to be went.

I have come to believe that changing doesn't necessarily mean losing ourselves. Sometimes it means discovering parts of ourselves we never needed before. We discover strength because something required us to become strong. We discover compassion because we know what it feels like to hurt. We discover courage because life gave us something frightening and we had to keep going anyway. We discover boundaries because we finally understand what happens when we live without them. We discover faith at a depth we never knew when faith was easy.

Maybe the question isn't always how to become the person we were before life changed. Maybe sometimes we need to ask who we are becoming because of everything we have walked through.

Then there is the Cheshire Cat, who gives Alice one of the most memorable conversations in the story when she wants to know which way she should go. The answer depends upon where she wants to get to, and Alice isn't really sure. I think there is a truth hidden in that exchange that becomes much more obvious as we grow older. We spend a lot of time asking which direction we should go without first deciding what kind of life we actually want to be moving toward.

It is easy to keep following whatever path appears in front of us. We do what is expected. We stay busy. We fulfill responsibilities. We move from one thing to the next, and sometimes years pass before we stop long enough to ask whether the direction we are traveling still makes sense. Being busy can create the illusion that we are moving forward even when we haven't decided where forward is.

Maybe there are times when getting a little lost isn't entirely bad. Sometimes wandering teaches us what we don't want. Sometimes the wrong road makes the right one clearer. Sometimes getting somewhere we thought we wanted to go teaches us that it wasn't what we wanted after all. Not every detour is wasted simply because it wasn't part of the original plan.

Alice also encounters plenty of people who are very confident despite making absolutely no sense. I find that much funnier as an adult than I probably should. Wonderland is filled with characters who speak with complete certainty while Alice stands there wondering whether she is the only person noticing how ridiculous everything is. There is a lesson in that too. Confidence isn't always the same thing as wisdom. Someone can say something loudly, repeatedly, and with tremendous certainty and still be wrong.

Maybe growing up means learning that we don't have to accept every voice simply because it speaks with authority. We can ask questions. We can think for ourselves. We can decide that something doesn't feel right even when everyone around us insists it is perfectly normal. There is courage in trusting the quiet voice inside us that says something isn't right here.

I think faith gives me an anchor in those moments. Life can become confusing very quickly, and sometimes I genuinely don't know which direction is right. But I have learned that I don't necessarily need to understand the entire road before I take the next step. Proverbs 3 tells us to trust in the Lord rather than leaning entirely on our own understanding and to acknowledge Him as He directs our paths. I think I appreciate those words more now because there have been plenty of times when my own understanding simply wasn't enough.

Trusting God doesn't mean everything suddenly makes sense. Sometimes faith means walking with Him while things still don't make sense. It means believing He knows where the road leads even when I can't see beyond the next turn. I would love for God to occasionally hand me a detailed map explaining exactly what is going to happen and why, but that hasn't generally been how faith has worked in my life. More often, He gives enough light for the next step and asks me to trust Him with everything beyond it.

By the end of her journey, Alice is different from the girl who first followed the White Rabbit. She has questioned things, stood up for herself, challenged authority, experienced the ridiculous, and eventually realized that she doesn't have to be intimidated by everything around her. Wonderland hasn't necessarily become less strange. Alice has become more certain of herself.

Maybe that is one of the gifts hidden inside the seasons of life that don't make sense. We enter them wanting answers, but sometimes what we receive instead is growth. We discover what matters. We learn which voices deserve our attention. We stop trying so desperately to fit into places that require us to become smaller. We learn that being confused doesn't mean we are lost forever and that not knowing what comes next doesn't mean there isn't a way forward.

I think we all fall down a few rabbit holes during our lives. Some are adventures we choose, and others are circumstances we never saw coming. Suddenly we find ourselves somewhere unfamiliar, trying to understand rules we never expected to learn and asking questions we never imagined having to ask. We may spend a while wishing we could climb back out and return to the life we had before.

But perhaps we don't always come out of the rabbit hole as the same person who fell into it.

Maybe we come out knowing ourselves a little better. Maybe we become more comfortable saying that something doesn't make sense. Maybe we stop allowing every loud voice to tell us what is true. Maybe we learn that changing doesn't mean disappearing and that getting lost for a while doesn't mean we will never find our way again.

And maybe the greatest lesson I take from Alice isn't that we need to understand Wonderland. It is that we can keep walking through it even when we don't. Life will always contain things I cannot explain, roads I cannot see around, people I cannot understand, and questions that don't have easy answers. I don't need to have all of it figured out today. I just need enough courage for the next step, enough wisdom to know which voices to follow, and enough faith to trust that God can still lead me when the road ahead looks a little like Wonderland.