Hey you! Is the world too much with you? Reality got you down? Tired of putting up with stuff? Like Joe in “Showboat,” are you “tired of living but scared of dying”?

Congratulations, you have come to the right place. As the emcee in “Cabaret” said, “Leave your troubles outside. In here life is beautiful. The girls are beautiful. Even the orchestra is beautiful.” Today’s lesson will be how to be happy. If this sounds a bit Polly Anna-ish, or even if you don’t know who Polly Anna was, take a chance any way, read the rest of this stain on world literature. Either you will be glad you did or you will waste three minutes of your life which you might have squandered on something equally trivial. The choice is yours, read on MacDuff or turn the page.

Let us begin with our old friend Alice in Wonderland. She has the formula for happiness in the face of adversity. Jefferson Airplane suggested to “Go Ask Alice/ I think she’ll know.” Turns out the Airplane was correct. Alice reveals how to be a cockeyed optimist in her Chapter entitled “Pig & Pepper.” Learn how Alice turns limes into margaritas. Alice is lost in the woods when she comes upon a house. She sees a fish dressed as a footman go to the house to knock on the door. The door is answered by a footman who has the head of a frog. A lesser mortal might have quietly backed into the woods as mutated footmen seldom bode well for the casual observer. Alice is made of
sturdier stuff.

She marches up to the house but has a frustrating conversation with the Frog footman. Realizing the Frog is not going to help her, she opens the door herself and barges inside. Not to mix metaphors, but the house is not like that of the Three Bears. There is no porridge but it is occupied by three unpleasant beings: the Cook, the Duchess, and her Baby. The kitchen looks like a scene from the Three Stooges. Instead of throwing pies at each other, the Cook is dumping way too much pepper in the soup while throwing pots, pans and kitchen utensils at the Duchess and her Baby. The Duchess is sneezing. Her baby is alternating between sneezing and howling. It’s a pretty wild scene, lacking only hungry wolves, a mob of Oath Keepers, and a school of flying jellyfish to be double plus ungood.

Alice, being a good-hearted sort, becomes quite concerned that the Baby will be seriously injured when a flying sauce pan nearly takes off the Baby’s nose. The Duchess, having been invited to play croquet with the Queen, exits stage right tossing the Baby to Alice. Alice catches the Baby which is bucking and writhing around in her arms while making a disturbing snorting noise. Alice takes on the role of Protective Services carrying the struggling Baby outside to avoid further kitchen flying objects. “If I don’t take this child away with me,” thought Alice, “they’re sure to kill it in a day or two, wouldn’t it be murder to leave it behind?”

Once outside the Baby commenced to grunting instead of howling. This disturbed Alice. Looking at the Baby she noticed its nose had become turned up. It began to appear to be more of a snout than a nose. Its eyes had shrunk into pig like beady marbles. She told the Baby “If you’re going to turn into a pig, my dear, I’ll have nothing more to do with you.” After a bit more time, the Baby began seriously grunting. Alice looked again and sure enough, the Baby had turned into a pig. Alice put the Pig/Baby down and “felt quite relieved to see it trot away quietly into the woods.”

Now here comes the lesson of today’s column wherein Alice makes the best of a bad situation. A lot of people would be freaked out by a Baby morphing into a pig. A lot of people might have considered such an event catastrophic for the Baby. A lot of people might have considered selling the Baby to a barbecue restaurant. But not Alice. She looks on the bright side. Alice relentlessly acts like two fried eggs by keeping her sunny side up. The reverse of the Pygmalion transformation of a statue into a lady does not dismay her in the least. Alice thinks: “It would have made a dreadfully ugly child but makes a rather a handsome pig, I think.” She then “began thinking over other children she knew; who might do very well as pigs if one only knew the right way to change them.”

So, there is our lesson for the day. If circumstances go awry, find the positive buried deep within the muck. Look for the rather handsome pig in every situation. Reframe reality to see the good even if it means you are delusional. Be like the old song: “You’ve got to accentuate the positive/ Eliminate the negative/ Latch on the affirmative/ Don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.”

Another plus is there is no proof that dinosaurs became extinct because their diet consisted solely of Blooming Onions from the Outback Steakhouse. Chow down!