(Disney Photo)
(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, April 11, 2015)
Lately, wandering around and doing nothing in particular, I’ve been reminded how the world would be a more peaceful place if we bothered more with Winnie-the-Pooh.
Now you may think that an imagined bear who is of little brain and doesn’t wear pants isn’t someone to spend great amounts of time with. On the other hand, Winnie-the-Pooh, who’s 100 years old in 2026, (Happy Birthday, bro), has been following me around for years.
First, here’s today’s fun fact. April 11, 1954 is known as the most boring day (hold that thought) of the 20thcentury. A slow news day, apparently it was entirely void of anything important happening, this according to a Cambridge University computer program, True Knowledge, (now Evi).
Just saying, today can be a very Pooh-like day.
I first learned of Pooh when learning to tie my shoes, then kept learning right into a university philosophy class – thank you Prof. Leo Groarke – where we read Benjamin Hoff’s “The Tao of Pooh,” a primer on Pooh’s ways. It’s best summarized here:
You: “Hello Pooh. What are you doing?”
Pooh: “Nothing.”
You: “Why nothing?”
Pooh: “Because it’s a nice day.”
You: “Yes, it’s a nice day. But you could be doing something important.”
Pooh: “I am. I’m listening to what the birds and squirrels are saying.”
You: “What are they saying?”
Pooh: “That it’s a nice day.”
This is Pooh. Unless he’s getting the last drop of honey from his pot, he doesn’t try hard at much. A stream of water flows over a rock. It gets there sooner or later, wherever there is, by simply being itself. It’s a modest approach to life.
You know when something happens in the right way at the right time without you getting your paws all over it? You realize that even if you tried to make things happen perfectly, you couldn’t have done it better, you’d have just messed it up. That’s being of little brain.
True, you need a big brain to fly a rocket to the moon. But when you turn to look at Earth, that blue ball suspended in vast nothingness, you don’t let your brain get in the way of the enjoyment and mystery. This too is being of little brain. It brings that peace.
Keep in mind that A.A. Milne, from Winnipeg, (thus “Winnie”), created Pooh after Milne’s First World War experiences. The real-life Winnie, a friendly black bear cub from White River, ON, was a mascot for Canadian infantrymen in England.
Healing from war trauma, Milne later wrote the book Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926, about Pooh and life in the Hundred Acre Wood to connect with his son Christopher Robin, and to connect with a gentler world, one of small adventures, not grand, destructive ones.
A young man like Owen Hebbert, among the brighter students I’ve taught and who’s now seriously studying Milne’s literary career, can share more. Which is to say I’ve discovered that the best students out there, like Pooh, don’t confuse knowledge with wisdom. They’re not educated idiots.
Imagine Pooh now on a world peace tour. In Australia, where kids are getting by with less social media, he’d easily speak in high praise of boredom.
Kids: “What does this have to do with world peace?”
Pooh: “When you’re at peace with yourself, you’re at peace with others.”
This is what he seems to say when I see him – I told you he’s been following me – whenever I pass that rather significant stuffed Pooh bear that sits large in a space in our home. I purchased the family keepsake in, funny enough, Yemen, during Gulf War II. It’s a daily reminder that our so-called enemies love their children too. Very much.
Pay attention, then, is what Pooh seems to say. Pay attention to life. To death. To everything in between. Even small messes can lead to peaceful moments if a bear is willing to sit still enough to notice them.