We're All Mad Here
As the world descends into madness, how do we hold on to our heads?
Imagine you are Alice. You don’t recognize the world you wake up in anymore. Frightening words and images float through your mind – pedophiles, demons, conspiracy cults, armies made of ICE – before dissolving into a jumble of letters and darkness swirling through your brain like smog. Everywhere you turn, you see an orange-haired demon mocking your every move. You try to stay focused, remember who you are, why you were born into this world to begin with. But the answers to these questions feel hazy now. Really…who are you? And why are you here, in this world which seems to look the same as it did yesterday, but in reality, feels realms apart?
You are the Queen of Hearts. Unloved, traumatized as a child, power-hungry and vindictive as an adult. You see a broken world before you. Zombie-like figures whose minds have split from their bodies and erupted into fragments, who no longer have the ability to discern truth from illusion, who are ruled by fear, numbed by depression, addicted to dopamine. What a thing of beauty you’ve created, my Queen! A sub-human species, so thoroughly lost, in desperate need of strong leadership. And what a leader you are, your highness! Enhancing the fear, enlarging the divisions, creating the most fertile environment in which to root your new kingdom.
You are the Hatter. Thoroughly confused and nonsensical, yet animated in your actions, creative, vibrant, colorful. There is deep grief buried beneath those layers of madness, and the confusion is very real. But to channel it into creativity, connection, and non-conformity – well, perhaps you’re the model of resistance we never thought to consider.
Did you know hatters in the 18th and 19th centuries had a very real reason to go mad? They were exposed for long periods of time to mercury nitrate, a chemical used to treat felt. This exposure led them to develop tremors, memory loss, mood swings, and erratic behaviour. They were poisoned simply by going about the business of their lives.
Sound familiar?
Mercury nitrate may no longer be the issue of the day. But deep-fried fast food, excessive screen time, schools that resemble jails, broken homes, unaffordable health care, biased and sensationalized media narratives bleeding into our ears 24/7 – you get the picture.
Our very lives, the things we hold dear, our families, our food, our health, our attention, our education, our sanity – everything has turned to poison.
It’s no wonder we’re all going mad.
The question is, how can we turn this madness into meaning? How can we craft clarity from confusion? How can anarchy transform into focused attention, articulation, and action?
How, indeed? If I had the answers, I wouldn’t be here writing in circles.
But one thing I do know is that life is a paradox. Humanity is both fragmented into polarities (man and woman, animal and angel, dark and light), yet also unified as one. Our power lies in being able to appreciate our differences, while still acting in the interests of the unified whole.
Two of the most important polarities we swing between are resistance and surrender. But WHO or WHAT you choose to resist, and WHO or WHAT you choose to surrender to, makes all the difference. Is it possible we got the two mixed up? Are we resisting the truth while surrendering to our enemy, without even realizing it?
What else do you call the one who pits us against each other, indeed, pits us against ourselves, and tries to make us believe that unity, equality, joy, and safety are fairytale notions that do not exist? How else can we label such an entity other than to call it our enemy?
Every Alice in existence has the capacity to turn into a hateful Queen or a mad and joyous Hatter. Which one will you surrender to? Which one will you resist?
Or maybe the more significant nuance to understand is, they are both equally important. There are times we need to surrender to our inner Queen, just as much as our Hatter. There are times we have to combine all our hate, rage, and bitterness, with our curiosity and creativity, to mock the absurdity of what our world has become, to proclaim with vigor “THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN!”
Whether you consider yourself an Alice, Queen, or Hatter (or any other creature made of wonder), wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all come together? Creating a Wonderland we would actually love to live in? Maybe the answer is in living each day as if we’re already there, taking back our world through the sheer force of our delusions, until we transform them into reality, refusing, resisting, revolting against anything less.
Perhaps in the process of going mad, fragmenting into pieces while surviving this chaotic world, we can learn to reassemble and re-member ourselves, with attention and intention. And as we do, maybe amongst the wreckage, we’ll find the gem hidden deep within us all – our personal power. Our power to discern and dare. To create and clarify. To build and break. To wait and wield.
To be love, but also, to be reckoning.
Such is the power of our paradox, if only we choose to use it.
We contain magnificent multitudes, yet we exist as one.
You are that you are. And you are here to do good things. Stellar piece. Peace.