December 16, 2025
Welcome to Wonderland
No one tells you you’re playing a game.
That’s the first rule of Wonderland.
You just wake up one day on a square you didn’t choose, standing on a board you don’t yet understand, surrounded by people who all seem to know something you don’t. Where you start isn’t up to you. It never was. That part belongs to whoever—or whatever—invited you into the game.
And that’s it.
That’s where you begin.
Wonderland is a beautiful place when you look around. You’ll see people and places and roads and oceans and streams. You’ll see conversations unfolding and flowers growing where you didn’t expect them to. Nothing is standing still, even when it looks like it is.
Slowly, you start to notice something.
This place isn’t chaos.
It looks chaotic sometimes, but it isn’t random.
It’s patterned.
The board lights up under your feet when you move. You can always turn around and look back to see how you got where you are. Even when it feels like you didn’t choose your path, it’s still your path. No one moves your piece but you.
And the funny thing about the game is this:
It’s always your turn.
You never have to move if you’re not ready. Sometimes you’re required to—school, time, certain rules we’ve all agreed to live with—but most of the time, movement is an invitation, not a command.
Some players stay close to where they started. They make small loops, return to home base, and that’s not a failure. Others wander far, crossing the board in wide arcs, stepping into places they’ve never been before.
There’s no best way to play.
There are no winners here.
The goal of the game isn’t to win.
The goal is to create a life you love inside the world you’re already in.
That’s what some people call Haven—your world within the world.
There are other players everywhere. They cross your path, move through your space, intersect your world. But you never share the same game piece. You can be like someone else, but you can never be them. You’ll never have their exact story, their exact path, their exact view of the board.
That’s what makes every player unique.
And this is where things get complicated.
People will often tell you the board works one way—their way. And for them, that can be completely true. If a player has only ever known one part of the board, it makes sense that they believe the whole game works like that.
But Wonderland is bigger than any one path.
If you accept someone else’s version of the board as the only version, you might find yourself pulled into their playing area, living by rules that were never meant for you.
There are rules in Wonderland. There are systems we’ve agreed to live with. There are even police. But there are no referees of the game itself. No one keeping score. No one blowing a whistle.
Some players try to appoint themselves as referees anyway. They watch other boards because it’s easier than looking at their own. But if you really understand the game, you learn to monitor your own world first.
When players ask for help, it’s worth remembering that advice always comes from someone else’s section of the board. Someone who’s never seen the ocean might not understand why you’d want to sit in the sand all day. That doesn’t make the beach wrong. It just means not everyone has seen the same things.
And in Wonderland, that’s okay.
Wonderland is made of many communities. Some look wildly different from others. When you’re inside one, it makes sense. When you’re outside it, it might not. Multiple things can be true at the same time.
There isn’t one right way to live in Wonderland.
The right way is when each player chooses how they want to live.
And this is important:
Wonderland is a players’ game.
Without players, Wonderland would still exist—but it would just be stuff. Abandoned places prove that. What gives Wonderland life is the people. The energy between them. The movement on the board.
Some people call that energy love.
Love isn’t loud here. It isn’t fireworks. It’s the vibration of the board itself. Most players arrive in Wonderland through love. Often, it takes two people to bring another one in.
That’s not an accident.
That’s the foundation.
Every person brought into Wonderland is special, no matter where they start on the board.
Now, Wonderland isn’t random.
If it were, it would be baby, zebra, ice cream cone.
But that’s not what you see.
In Wonderland, zebras generally end up at the zoo. Babies generally end up in nurseries. Ice cream cones usually show up at little stands along your path. There is structure here—but there is also choice. At any moment, you can turn around. You can go back. You can choose differently.
Now, this is a fairytale, so we have to be honest.
There are dangers in the woods.
Sometimes, when you’re traveling, you’ll meet an old woman with a basket of apples. They’ll look perfect. You’ll be tired. It will seem foolish not to take one.
And maybe you do.
And maybe you fall asleep.
Maybe you lose a few years.
Maybe you wake up in another place on the board.
But if you’re lucky—and if you remember Wonderland—you’ll realize that where you are now isn’t the only place that exists. You’re still in the game. Just in a different spot.
And here’s the most important lesson:
If you were the little girl who took the apple, it’s because you were ready for that lesson.
Not because you were foolish.
Not because you failed.
But because that experience was the one you needed next.
Her name was Haven.
She started on a square she didn’t want—a place where she felt sad, alone, and afraid. But Haven was brave. She was kind. And she carried an almost ridiculous belief that her life could get better.
She was willing to do the work.
She was willing to take the journey.
If you look at her path, you’ll see more mistakes than most. More detours. More time in the woods. And in Wonderland, that’s often the cost of finding the most beautiful things.
The players who stay safe don’t encounter much trouble.
But they don’t encounter much wonder either.
Even the people who were born on the beach eventually walk into the woods. And when they come back out, they might find themselves on a beach even more beautiful than the one they started on—not because the sand changed, but because they did.
Along the way, Haven learned a few simple things that felt almost like rules. One was kindness. In Wonderland, what you give out tends to come back. For every action, there really is an equal and opposite reaction—and that’s kind of the joke. Another thing she learned is that no one gets to stay in Wonderland forever. Every player disappears from the board eventually. You can’t take anything with you, but you can leave the place a little better than how you found it. And maybe the most important thing she learned was this: every time you trust yourself, believe in yourself, and go for it, you level up. You move to the next part of the board. Things start to align when you align. It’s not magic exactly—but in Wonderland, it feels pretty close. And if you ever fall down and scrape your knees and feel like giving up, just take a minute and remember: it’s all just a game.
At the end of her board, Haven stopped and looked around.
Everything there was hers.
Even the pieces she wasn’t sure about.
They were still her choices.
And she understood the final truth of Wonderland:
Wonderland isn’t Haven.
Wonderland is made of many Havens—each one different, each one special. If everyone were the same, it would be a world of robots. And that wouldn’t be Wonderland at all.
And if you could step back and look at every path woven across the board—every wrong turn, every detour, every return—you might find yourself saying, in the end:
It all made sense.
Because when you believe Wonderland is only a certain way,
it will most likely only be that way in your Wonderland.
And once you understand that,
the next move is always yours.