Pooh Was Not Confused

As a child in the 1980s, it was common to encounter the way life really works through stories. In my case, I was drawn to nostalgia before I even had the language for it. There was a real groundedness in those stories that has stayed with me whether I understood them at the time or not. Winnie the Pooh, Babar, The Wind in the Willows, Charlie Brown. They offered a way of making everything seem like there was a “normal” and they allowed us all to see a world that felt steady, human, and true.

Each year around my birthday, which falls at the end of November just before the holidays, I find myself reflecting on the speed of life. Questions like, ‘What have I learned?’, ‘What do I miss?’ and ‘Who do I miss?’ are common occurrences. Last year, I kept asking myself, ‘What actually matters in a world that feels so shallow and loud'?’.

As the question was contemplated, I have found myself returning again and again to the essence of things. I like the basics and I really miss them. I found myself digging into the “why?” underneath all of the noise which drowns out all of the stuff we should really be paying attention to. With so much uncertainty surrounding us economically, technologically, and culturally, I sometimes wish I knew less, heard less, and frankly, thought less.

I genuinely miss seeing the world with the same childlike hope and innocence I’d encountered stories like Pooh with. Now, it’s hard not to become a cynic, or even confused with those around me, these so-called “leaders”, operating with childish and shallow agendas.

My constant longing for steadiness, in life and in work, frequently brings me back to Winnie the Pooh. Though my little eyes only got to take in those stories through VHS, today’s convenience of streaming offers a never-ending supply of old episodes and movies to my kids and me. Having watched quite a bit over the past six months, I’ve come across numerous moments throughout those stories that take place in the Hundred Acre Wood when Pooh pauses mid thought to consider something quite small. Sometimes it is hunger and sometimes it is friendship. Needless to say, his ability to just stop gets me jealous. He’s rarely in a hurry, and he is almost never trying to impress anyone, including himself. Pooh doesn’t seem preoccupied with how little time he has. He just sort of inhabits it.

When I was younger, I definitely misunderstood Pooh’s rhythm as being simple, shallow and boring. Now it has become clear to me that Pooh is not simple in the way we usually mean it and that his kind of boredom may actually be virtuous. He is always attentive and present, understanding what matters, at least in the moment, because he stays with things long enough to feel their weight in his life and the world around him.

When contrasted with today’s obsession with efficiency, Pooh’s approach feels almost shocking. I mean, I recently read that studios are now designing stories, shows, and systems assuming the audience will be half present. Seriously, they expect that humans will be so absent in their being, that they’ll be staring at a phone while something else plays in the background. My mind is blown.

Pooh, by contrast, by contrast still sees the forest and the trees. And though he appears simple, he understands something essential that “others” in his circle miss.

The others I’m referring to in this story are not Piglet or Eeyore or Tigger though I’m sure they miss the depth of what Pooh sees too. I’m specifically referring to Owl.

Owl holds a position of authority in his world and is admired for knowing many things. Sound familiar to those leaders and influencers we’ve put up on digital pedestals? Owl has managed to retain a remarkable amount of information and has no issues recollecting anything as he explains it all fluently. He speaks with confidence, an expansive vocabulary, and a certain sense of importance. He is rarely silent, and yet, in spite of being one of the few who “get it”, the deeper meaning of the moment almost always passes him by.

The difference between Pooh and Owl is not intelligence, it is awareness. It’s that one is attentive to what is happening TO him. The other is focused on what is happening AROUND him.

Put another way, both live in the same place, but only one lives inside of it. Pooh inhabits the world in which he resides while Owl merely has a marketable way of describing it.

This distinction reminds me of a scene from the movie Good Will Hunting. There is a scene in which the lead character Will (played by Matt Damon), the charismatic mechanic who is both intelligent explains his view of love, loss, war, art, and suffering with unbelievable accuracy. In the midst of his explanation he freely references books, poets, and history with ease. Like an attorney who has prepped for trial, his analysis and evidence is not wrong.

But Sean (played by the late Robin Williams), his therapist, responds calmly and directly to Will’s unlived lesson. He does not accuse Will of ignorance, but instead points out his distance from the reality of what it’s like to live each of those experiences. Will only knows about love because he has read about it, not because he has chosen it with his own free will. In fact, at that stage of life, he has not been a human long enough to be changed by illness, boredom, forgiveness, or grief.

Like Owl, Will has knowledge (and lots of it), but he lacks a foundation and roots. The proverbial rings around his trunk to relate to real situations.

This distinction feels increasingly relevant today. We live in an age of explanation and access in which virtually everything can be named, summarized, categorized, and recalled. Everybody is an expert. There is no shortage of answers, but what seems obvious to me is that the vacancy sign above good questions is clearly lit.

From where I sit, what has become increasingly scarce in our modern times is discernment. Not simply knowing what something is, but knowing whether it actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

Pooh would never confuse the between what something is and whether it matters or not. When he pauses, it is not because he lacks information, but because he is listening for something quieter at a greater depth. He understands that meaning is not extracted by brute force but instead is received through patience. That is why he is often found sitting, walking, or waiting. He trusts that understanding arrives in its own time, and his role is to be attentive enough to recognize it.

Owl, however, does not wait. He fills the quiet space with noise and busyness.

This is not a moral failure on the part of Owl. It is a habit that has led to the confusion of means and ends. Owl believes knowledge itself is the goal while Pooh understands, instinctively, that knowledge only matters if it serves a purpose, relationship and calling.

In the Hundred Acre Wood, the world is not shaped by Owl’s explanations of how things are, it is shaped by Pooh’s presence and the way things are.

That in of itself is an idea worth sitting with. It also poses another question. What is shaping our world and are we okay with it?

There is a subtle temptation today to equate clarity with being complete. We have been led to believe that if something can be articulated confidently, practiced with confidence or can be generated quickly, it must have been understood extraordinarily well in the first place. But this is not objectively true. In other words, accuracy in describing knowledge is not a synonymn for wisdom.

Pooh never confuses these kinds of things. He does not rush to finish a thought, is not intimidated by boredom and he is not turned off by repetition. He refuses to chase trends because trends, by definition, are not timeless. He returns to the same small truths again and again, because that is where life is fully lived.

I don’t want to be confused by what a fully lived life looks like. I don’t just want to explain it. I want to embody it.

This type of “knowing what matters” cannot and will never be automated. It is learned through the human experiences of time, limits, experience, affection, loss, and consequence. It belongs to those who live within their circumstances rather than narrating them from a distance. In the Hundred Acre Wood, as was noted before, Pooh lives with consequences while Owl mostly specializes in narrating them.

Children’s stories like Winnie-the-Pooh endure because they refuse to confuse explanation with understanding. Winnie-the-Pooh does not aim to inform or persuade. It merely aims to form and then it teaches us how to “be” before it teaches us “what” to know.

In this modern world of neon lights vying for our attention, it is easy to forget that the deepest truths, gifts, and blessings are rarely showy. They arrive quietly, asking us to slow down, watch and listen. They invite us to notice and be content when something has already been enough.

Perhaps the real work of our time is not creating fresh ways to learn faster or explain better, but by learning how to remain present long enough for meaning to take shape and reveal itself. Some worlds, whether the Hundred Acre Wood or the planet Earth, are not actually meant to be mastered or narrated. They are meant to be lived in, with wisdom revealing itself to those willing to sit still and pay attention to its voice.