I’m still here, friends. Thanks for checking in. I bring with me a story to describe my month-long absence.
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in the company of the Red Queen. They are hand in hand, running, running, running. The wind whistles in Alice’s ears. Her hair streams behind her, and her feet skim the ground. She runs so hard she can hardly catch her breath. Yet —
The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything.
And then, as suddenly as they started, they stop.
[Alice] found herself sitting on the ground breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her up against a tree, and said kindly, “You may rest a little, now.”
Alice looked around her in great surprise. “Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!”
“Of course it is,” said the Queen. “What would you have it?”
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
“I’d rather not try, please!” said Alice.
Like Alice, I’ve been running under the same tree all month, surprised that so much time and energy can be expended just maintaining one location. I thought I would have lowered the stacks of paperwork a few more inches by now, for example. I thought I’d be closer to shore in fighting my drift in health habits. I thought I’d have completed the projects I have begun. I thought more of the scenery would have changed.
But it hasn’t. And now it’s April. So I have flopped under this tree, and decided this is as good time as any to catch my breath and reconnect with you. Thanks for sitting next to me. I’ve missed you! Your company refreshes. Some of you are wacky, like the Red Queen, which keeps life interesting, but all of you refresh me. Thank you!
And now I think it’s time to follow the words of Toby Mac on his “Tonight” CD:
Get back up again.
And resume the race!