Down the Rabbit Hole

A thought experiment for the famous book,  Alice in Wonderland, is this: If insanity was a place, what would it be like? This is not to minimize mental illness, but to pose an interesting juxtaposition and look at the well known book from a unique perspective. There are so many well known characters that one can overlook the fact that Wonderland can also be seens as a character. 

There’s a story about the author, Lewis Carroll, and Alice who was the daughter of a friend. They were in a room with a full length mirror and Lewis handed an orange to Alice and asked her, “in what hand are you holding the orange?” She replied that it was her right hand. Lewis then had Alice stand in front of the mirror and asked again. She was a bit puzzled and said that now it was in her left hand. When asked to explain, little Alice said something  like, “If I was on the other side of the looking glass, the orange would still be in my right hand.” 

I’m not sure if that story is true, but I want to believe it and want to believe that the anecdote inspired his Through the Looking Glass. 

So how do I get to the title? It’s an expression that means to get lost while researching and finding all sorts of interesting tangential things. Going down the rabbit hole can produce new information, but too often it leads to inefficiencies and superfluous findings. And yet, I often find myself  “down the rabbit hole” and that’s okay. The expression has stayed with us for over one hundred seventy years and it all started when when Alice saw a large rabbit who was late and she followed him down the rabbit hole.