Mindful
Diamond Member
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I very much enjoy metaphors, word pictures, etc. and thus I find the journey that Alice goes on to be such an interesting metaphor for the kind of growth processes we all are in the midst of at various points in our lives. Without giving away too much of the movie (and the point of this post isn’t to be a movie review anyway), Alice begins her journey having various nagging questions about herself that in many ways boil down to an uncertainty about who she is or even who she would wish to grow into.
It is in the context of various relationships that Alice makes sense of who she is.
What is particularly striking about how the story unfolds is that it is in the context of various relationships that Alice makes sense of who she is. Some of this comes in the form of others telling her who she is or is not, or telling her what she must or must not do. Those kinds of interactions, both for Alice and for all of us in life, aren’t very helpful or constructive in themselves, but what we can all learn to do (and Alice wrestles to do) in such relationship contexts is to listen harder to what our insides (our own sense of who we are deep down) are telling us. Ironically, fighting to hear ourselves even in yucky interactions where others are trying (perhaps not intentionally) to get us to be something we’re not can actually end up being quite fruitful due to how informative our reactions to such interactions can be. In the movie there are multiple instances where Alice learned more about herself simply through listening to herself regarding how much she did not agree with something that another was insisting upon her.
transitionsmft.org
It is in the context of various relationships that Alice makes sense of who she is.
What is particularly striking about how the story unfolds is that it is in the context of various relationships that Alice makes sense of who she is. Some of this comes in the form of others telling her who she is or is not, or telling her what she must or must not do. Those kinds of interactions, both for Alice and for all of us in life, aren’t very helpful or constructive in themselves, but what we can all learn to do (and Alice wrestles to do) in such relationship contexts is to listen harder to what our insides (our own sense of who we are deep down) are telling us. Ironically, fighting to hear ourselves even in yucky interactions where others are trying (perhaps not intentionally) to get us to be something we’re not can actually end up being quite fruitful due to how informative our reactions to such interactions can be. In the movie there are multiple instances where Alice learned more about herself simply through listening to herself regarding how much she did not agree with something that another was insisting upon her.
Down the Rabbit Hole to Find Yourself
I recently had the pleasure of watching Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland1 and was reflecting afterwards on how some of the themes (especially of finding oneself or becoming more oneself, and the strength that comes from such growth) relate to the counseling that I enjoy (both as a counselor, in...
transitionsmft.org
