The Tao of Pooh!

I had a really positive reaction when reading The Tao of Pooh.   In the beginning of the book, when Benjamin Hoff mentioned how people did not believe in his idea of explaining Taoism through Winnie the Pooh, even I was curious as to how this would carry out.  I think that many people who have heard of this book never thought that a little bear could teach them so much.  Going beyond Winnie the Pooh, I feel that this book shows readers that we try to make things so complicated for ourselves, when in fact, we can find explanations in the simplest things in life. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book, and I thought that the whole concept was adorable.

I couldn’t agree more when Hoff made the claim of America being a culture of Bisy Backsons.  Ever since birth, we always have a goal to strive for.  As infants, parents become so excited and push us to learn to sit on our own, crawl, talk, and walk.  As children, we are always encouraged to go to school, to participate in sports and extra-curricular activities, to be doing this and that.  As adults, the natural course of action is to finish our education, get a job, marry, and have kids.  It’s as if everyone is suppose to follow this formula society has laid out for us, and if anyone chooses a different path, society questions him (for example, the 50 year old bachelor that refuses to settle down).  And in trying to follow this formula, it seems that we are always striving for something that we don’t have: we want to make more money, have a better job, a bigger house.  We are never just satisfied with what we have.  We always want more.  In attempting to achieve this “something more,” we do become Bisy Backsons.  Our mind never sits still.  It always thinks of the next thing it can do to achieve that “something more.”   Hoff writes, “Our religion, sciences, and business ethics have tried to convince us that there is a great reward out there and we have to spend our lives working as lunatics to catch up with it.  And somehow, its always further along than we are, whether down the road, on the other side of the road, etc.” (p. 97-98).  Bisy Backsons always want to be somewhere else than where they are, always want something else than what they have, always want to be with other people than who they are already with.  It’s hard for them to be happy.   While I do think that American culture possesses a majority of Bisy Backsons, I think we can turn our lives around and put our happiness in our own hands.  I definitely include myself when talking about Bisy Backsons because I often find myself caught up in everything that I’m doing and not finding a chance to just be, like Pooh.  As Hoff mentions in the book, we should follow the Pooh Way: no stress, no mess (p. 87).  The less stress we place upon ourselves, the more we can appreciate life and what we are given, rather than always running after what we don’t have.

I feel that Taoist principles might do a good job in solving the problem of American culture and individuals.  If the problem is that America is a culture of Bisy Backsons and Americans are not satisfied with anything, and while striving for this “something more” they are causing themselves and this world harm, then I do believe that Taoism can be beneficial. There’s a Taoist belief that says, “while the scholarly intellect may be useful for analyzing certain things, deeper and broader matters are beyond its limited reach” (p.24). If American culture and society stops putting such a big emphasis on intellectual thought and stops considering academic achievement more successful than other kinds of achievement, the world will be better and people will have a chance to be appreciative of other things.  There will also be less stress among people in terms of achieving that next step that society expects us to overcome.  I feel that Taoism believes that matters of the heart are more important than matters of the mind.  If some of the decisions that America made were to be based on compassion instead of materialistic gains, we would be in a different, and perhaps better place right now.