“While Eeyore frets…
…and Piglet hesitates
…and Rabbit calculates
…and Owl pontificates
…Pooh just is.”
Benjamin Hoff, author of The Tao of Pooh
Last week I picked up The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff expecting to learn a little more about Taoism (the ancient Chinese philosophy).
Unexpectedly, I learned that Winnie the Pooh contains wisdom for people with ADHD.
I could be described as a combination of Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, and Owl.
Fretting that life isn’t going as planned. Overthinking every last decision. Calculating my expenses in a spreadsheet with fear we’ll one day run out of money and end up on the streets.
But, what if I didn't? Would my life be different today?
If I lived like Winnie the Pooh, accepting reality for what it is, would I be homeless?
I doubt it.
Might even be better off. Minus the wasted worry over future hallucinations. Future is a phantom. Only now is real.
Some books alter you.
The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer changed me. So did Antifragile by Nassim Taleb.
The Tao of Pooh has done it too.
Here’s how I intend to follow the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh from now on:
Without force
I wrote last week about the art of non-doing.
Non-doing, better translated as non-forcing, means that we let life flow as it flows. Our job is merely to go along with that natural flow — like a river following the path of least resistance on its way to the ocean.
Alan Watts explains non-forcing:
The world is a happening place.
A busy place.
If we’re aware enough, quiet enough, perceptive enough, life will show us the way — our own path of least resistance.
But if we resist, this world can be awful.
When we resist reality, we experience stress.
Stress is saying “I can’t accept this reality I see before me, I want it to be different, and if it’s not different I won’t be happy”.
I have found this to be a recipe for disaster.
So I’m learning, slowly, to take the opposite path, the simple path — the path of non-forcing.
Learning from direct experience
I love to read.
I read whenever I’m free.
There are few downsides to reading. However, there’s one enormous downside that’s rarely spoken about.
Learned knowledge vs. direct experience.
“The globe is full of learned idiots, unable or incapable of following the wisdom they have accumulated. There's no prize for a closet full of axioms or insights.”
David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder Basecamp
I could read every single book on ADHD and wouldn’t find the exact insights on how I manage my ADHD.
In fact, I would be more confused, more frustrated, more stuck.
I know this, and yet I often ignore it, picking up more and more books in the hope of finding that rare piece of knowledge that finally relieves my pain.
When you’ve met one person with ADHD, you’ve met (literally) one person with ADHD.
Only we know our unique experience.
So if we learn via direct experience, we can find ways for dealing with our unique version of ADHD that may (or may not) be applicable to anyone else.
Note to self: don’t stop reading, but put direct experience ahead of learned knowledge.
The book
This quote sums up why it’s worth you reading The Tao of Pooh:
“When you work with Wu-Wei [non-forcing], you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done.”
Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
Read the book. It’s short, 150 pages, and moves quickly.
You might get something different from it. If you do, please share your insights with me.
See you next week…