Dr. Mukherjee used the story of the Red Queen’s race from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass in his best-seller The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. The analogy burned a place in my mind, and I have been drawn back to it several times since I finished the book.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Oh, how true in our warp-speed society. Twice as fast is the standard, no? There is some ridiculosity in our “average” daily speed. I cannot help but laugh as I hear the Red Queen in my ear. Sometimes I am panting. Other times I smirk back and intentionally slow my pace, re-evaluating the time and distance.

What’s your pace today?