Begin At The Beginning

I’m taking the King’s advice in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland wherein it is advised to “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop”. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who is better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, wrote many books amongst which Alice in Wonderland is my favourite. I have long owned a 1986 edition of The Complete Illustrated Works of Lewis Carroll published by Chancellor Press, London.

Though Wikipedia says that Carroll’s works belong to the genre of literary nonsense, his writings continue to be remarkably relevant even today, more than a century later. For example, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has chosen to use a portion to illustrate a section titled Writing Objectives. This is the part where Alice meets the Cheshire Cat in the forest and asks:

“Could you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to”, said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where…” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“…so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.”

The above is a great way to understand the importance of goal-setting. One definition of success is “achieving your goals whatever they are”. The important thing is to have a goal, otherwise how will you know that you’ve arrived!

I’ll also heed the King’s advice and end this post, my first, where it should: here.