It's Spring! Rabbit holes, hares and rediscovering our childhood wonder.

Closing in on spring, we’re seeing a plethora of Jackrabbits zig-zagging our yard.? Most mornings, 4 or 5 juveniles scamper out from the Manzanita bush, bolting from rock to tree to dirt pile and back before I’ve made my first cup of coffee.? They’re entertaining, sometimes getting into rabbit boxing matches. They're also efficient landscapers nibbling down star thistle and filaree weed shoots before they get out of hand.? Watching their antics makes me think of rabbit holes only to discover that Jackrabbits aren’t rabbits but hares. They don't dig or go down rabbit holes.? Jackrabbits make nests in well-protected bushes, their young born with hair and eyes wide open. They can run and hop shortly after birth.?

Rabbits are born hairless, blind and helpless requiring~ you got it~rabbit holes.

Having gone down scores of rabbit holes over the course of my career, I’m wondering why they got such a bad rap.? How many business strategy sessions rein us in from the rabbit hole as if it’s a mortal hazard? Many meetings include ideation, proposed solutions on post-it notes, organizing like to like thoughts on a whiteboard to solve business problems. These meetings are efficient and inclusive group-think producing next steps, but are we missing something? What is the provenance of a bonafide rabbit hole? And should we avoid one?

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland made going down the rabbit hole a thing.? We can interpret Alice’s journey into the subconscious, surrealism, or the suspension of time:

“Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next.”

I love how Carroll pairs “wonder” with “looking” and “plenty of time”. Thinking back over 35 years of business meetings, it’s hard to put my finger on moments of wonder or suspended time to look around. Did I ever feel like I had hours to be enchanted by what might happen next? That "what" felt pre-ordained by goals, sales thresholds and financial targets calculated in Excel spreadsheet columns quarter after quarter and year after year.

Time ticks in dollars and work needs to be done.

Here’s the thing with work.? I was so busy doing that I lost wonder.? I ticked the minutes, hours, days and years and forgot to look around and explore all the “what ifs” that might happen next.? I gained career and financial stability by accepting the limitations of possibility and being a successful adult, but at what cost? Seanan McGuire captures this idea beautifully in her series of books titled Wayward Children.

“Children have always tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes. Children have always traveled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven’t always restricted their travel to the possible. Adulthood brings limitations like gravity and linear space and the idea that bedtime is a real thing, and not an artificially imposed curfew. Adults can still tumble down rabbit holes and into enchanted wardrobes, but it happens less and less with every year they live. Maybe this is a natural consequence of living in a world where being careful is a necessary survival trait, where logic wears away the potential for something bigger and better than the obvious. Childhood melts, and flights of fancy are replaced by rules. Tornados kill people: they don’t carry them off to magical worlds. Talking foxes are a sign of fever, not guides sent to start some grand adventure.

But children, ah, children. Children follow the foxes, and open the wardrobes, and peek beneath the bridge. Children climb the walls and fall down the wells and run the razor’s edge of possibility until sometimes, just sometimes, the possible surrenders and shows them the way to go home.”

― Seanan McGuire, Beneath the Sugar Sky

We’re on the cusp of spring, longer horizons and life blossoming beneath our toes.?Find your rabbit hole and take your time going down to rediscover that kid you were before responsibility, rules, logic, safety and practicality took charge.

Maybe aging is going down that rabbit hole to find our way back to childhood wonder?