The Pooh Way!

        The Tao of Pooh was an excellent read! I thoroughly enjoyed how Hoff put the work together. As I child I honestly despised Winnie the Pooh because I considered him to be very slow and strange. His co-character Tigger was more of my favorite because he was always on the go. Overall, the book was refreshing to say the least. Benjamin Hoff used a childhood character that most people can relate and basically reiterated the important lessons that we were supposed to learn as a child that we may have missed. This was definitely one of the easier reads this semester!
        The book calls our culture the BUSY BACKSONS and well I totally agree. The American Culture is so busy that we barely even have time to eat; we are always eating something from a fast food restaurant or a frozen dinner/meal. “It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Backson thinks of progress in terms of fighting and overcoming. One of his little idiosyncrasies, you might say. Of course real progress involves growing and developing, which involves changing inside, but that's something the inflexible Backson is unwilling to do." I agree with this quote from the book. As Americans we believe that to get anywhere in life we must work hard and fight to obtain the American dream. Any small change that may occur may offset or delay this goal and put us back which we don’t want because most of us are working on a time frame to begin with. As Americans we rarely get to enjoy the simple things (unless we are on vacation) because we attempt to move at the speed of light; which is basically what Hoff suggests when he basically says that we’ve created an unhealthy cycle in order to not waste time.

        The more I read about Taoism the more I think to myself that I should be Taoist. As an American (especially as a college student) I’m used to being satisfied with getting anywhere from 4 to 8 hours of sleep on a good day, living off of McDonalds for Breakfast, and all the other factors of the American life. Taoism does appear to be the solution to the American Problem. We (Americans) put so much pressure on ourselves to succeed that when we fail it seems as if all is lost. Taoism teaches us that we should let things happen as they may and that we shouldn’t rush to save time because time can’t be saved anyway. I wonder how different the world would be if everyone lived the Pooh way!