Muchness

I’m a great fan of Johnny Depp, not because he’s such a looker but because he brings such freshness and quirkiness into each character he tackles onscreen.

He did it again in Alice in Wonderland which my daughter-in-law Opal and I watched recently as part of our bonding time.

“You’ve lost your muchness,” his Mad Hatter character told Alice, sort of rebuking her for stubbornly believing that whatever she was going through in Underland was a dream and that its problems didn’t concern her.

The statement struck me—on top of all the delightful scenes and effects ingeniously created by director Tim Burton.

I suppose the kid in us accounts for much of this muchness.

We can think fantasy, just like author Lewis Carroll whose “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” inspired this movie; or wonder, like Johnny Depp who approaches a role like he were treating us to candy ready to be unwrapped then slowly savored, leaving one clamoring for more, with some shrieks and chuckles besides; or other-wordly, like Tim Burton’s take on most of his movies (Remember Edward Scissorhands and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?).

I would love for me to think like a child again—for muchness.

Then I would not be so dense to reject others’ point of view, or judge them or consider them less than myself.

I would be more teachable, like Alice learned “why” when she went to that place in her heart where she became a child again.

That was when she understood and took her mission to heart.