Wisdom from Lewis Carroll

Yesterday I read an excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” It was about Alice’s encounter with the Cheshire cat. When the cat pointed out which way the Mad Hatter and the March Hare lived, Alice exclaimed that she didn’t want to be around mad people. “Oh you can’t help that,” Said the Cat: “we’re all mad here.”

No matter where we go, there will be “mad” people. We will meet people who are disagreeable, strange, and antagonistic. We can either be offended by them, or we can choose to give them the benefit of the doubt and not let them bother us.

At work there is a girl who is sometimes rude to me. Usually I would avoid her and never spoke to her. But today I decided to smile and say hello to her when I went into work. And to my surprise, she smiled and said hello back. I may never know why she acts the way she does sometimes, but it doesn’t mean I can’t be nice to her.