Down the Rabbithole

This week, my curiosity has taken me back to Alice in Wonderland—specifically that moment when Alice decides to follow the White Rabbit, not because she knows where it will lead, but because she can’t help herself. There’s no plan, no assurance that it’s a good idea. Just a tug. A question. A sense that staying put would be stranger than moving forward.

I’ve been thinking about how rarely we allow ourselves that kind of movement as adults. Curiosity, at some point, becomes something we’re expected to justify. We’re encouraged to ask questions that lead somewhere productive, somewhere legible. The rest—the wandering, the wondering, the impulses that don’t come with an explanation—are treated like distractions.

But curiosity has never really worked that way. It doesn’t announce outcomes. It doesn’t promise efficiency. It simply asks to be followed.

As children, we do this instinctively. We fall down rabbit holes without worrying about how long we’ll be gone or whether the journey will make sense afterward. Somewhere along the way, we learn to hesitate. To weigh risk. To ask whether the path is practical, defensible, necessary.

And yet, so much of what matters in our lives begins exactly there—in the moment before certainty, when something unfamiliar catches our attention and refuses to let go.

I keep wondering what would happen if we trusted that instinct a little more often. If we allowed ourselves to follow the thread without demanding that it justify itself first.

When was the last time you followed a white rabbit in your own life?