Every week, I meet people who are in motion but not in direction. They’re busy, productive, juggling work and family and commitments — but when I ask where they’re going, the answers blur. Not where they’re headed this week. Where they’re headed in life.

And every time, I think of the Cheshire Cat.

In Chapter 6 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice asks:

“Would 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 much 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.”

That’s it, right there. You can walk long enough and you’ll get somewhere. But somewhere isn’t home. Somewhere isn’t purpose. Somewhere isn’t the life you were meant to live.

As Earl Nightingale once said, “The road of somewhere leads to the town of nowhere.”

And that’s the difference — the choice between drifting through Wonderland and deliberately crossing the board in Through the Looking-Glass.

Not Wonderland — Looking-Glass

Too many of us live in Wonderland — chasing the next novelty, the next distraction, the next “wow,” and calling it a life. It’s not wrong to wander, but without a destination, wandering becomes drifting. Drifting becomes circling. And circling is just slow-motion stuck.

But Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass is a different kind of story. Alice steps up to a mirror and steps through it. Everything is reversed. The rules are strange. Familiar things appear foreign. At first, she doesn’t fully understand what she’s seeing. She’s young, still learning — but this time, she has a destination: to move across the chessboard and become a queen.

That’s the difference. In Wonderland, she reacts. In the Looking-Glass, she has a why. She knows where she’s going.

The Work of the Mirror

The mirror is where the real work begins. In Wonderland, you can avoid yourself. You can keep chasing shiny distractions. But in the Looking-Glass, you’re confronted with yourself — the reversed image, the one that shows you both what you’ve been hiding and what you’ve been missing.

Seeing yourself in the glass isn’t about perfection. It’s about truth. You see the contradictions. The scars and the strengths. The mistakes and the meaning. You see who you’ve been, and you start to glimpse who you could be.

As I wrote in The Wound Is The Way, sometimes it’s the cracks in the reflection that lead you to meaning, wholeness, and even power. The mirror doesn’t just show the polished parts — it shows the fractures. And often, those fractures are the very place where your why begins to take shape.

That’s your compass. That’s your why.

And here’s the hard truth: you can’t find your way home until you face that reflection. Until you step through the glass, un-reverse the image, and live in alignment with the truth staring back at you.

The Looking Glass, Logotherapy, and the Way Home

This is exactly what Viktor Frankl understood — and lived. Frankl survived Auschwitz not through luck, but through meaning. He built Logotherapy on one unshakable truth: when you have a clear why, you can endure and transcend almost any how.

Your why is your looking glass. It’s the lens through which you see your life honestly. It’s the coordinates you set on your internal compass. It’s the point of orientation that turns chaos into direction.

Think of your why like GPS coordinates. Without it, you can be moving fast, burning fuel, feeling busy — and still be going nowhere that matters.

The why is your map, your compass, your North Star. It tells you not just which roads to take, but which ones to avoid. It keeps you from following other people’s maps when you don’t have one of your own.

And here’s the thing: home isn’t necessarily a physical place. Sometimes it’s a version of yourself you’ve never met — the one that lives in alignment with your values, your gifts, and your truth.

Without your why, you’re stuck in Wonderland, forever chasing novelty and calling it living. With it, you’re in Looking-Glass mode — navigating the reversals, but moving deliberately toward the life you’re meant to live.

The Reverse Image

Life will reverse on you. The rules will change. What felt certain will flip. Up will be down. The familiar will turn unfamiliar. And when it does, the mirror will show you a version of yourself you may not want to see — the one that’s been drifting, avoiding, or playing small.

Our work is to face that image. To understand it. To see the truth without flinching. The mirror doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t flatter. It reflects the gap between the life you’re living and the life you could be living.

The Cheshire Cat was talking about your why all along. Frankl’s why was the same — the unshakable reason that gets you through the chaos and into your purpose. And that guy or gal staring back at you from the glass? They are calling you to your why. Calling you to stop circling. Calling you to find your way across the chessboard, to take your rightful place as queen or king, and to come home.

The Cheshire Cat wasn’t wrong — if you don’t care where you’re going, any road will do. But if you want to go somewhere that matters — if you want to live anchored in your why — you have to step through the looking glass. You have to meet the person staring back at you. You have to know your why.

Because in the end, that’s how you win the game. That’s how you take the crown. That’s how you find your way home.

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Dr. Baruch “B” HaLevi
Host, 13 Minutes: Why Everyone Needs a Why
Men’s Coaching • Men’s Peer Groups • Logotherapy (Why Counseling)
Forthcoming book: The Guy In The Glass: Why You Need a Why