Piglet: physically and mentally small, unconfident in his abilities and unable to take advantage of the good traits he does possess.Eeyore: perpetually depressed and lacking self-worth.

Owl: neurotic in his pursuit of knowledge and efficiency, constantly treading on the egos of others while consistently missing the bigger picture.

If you’re familiar with the beloved childhood stories of Winnie the Pooh, you should already have a picture in your head of what this may look like. The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff uses the nuanced characters of Winnie the Pooh as stand-ins for various different personality types. Does choosing to follow Taoism choosing to simply be stagnant?īut this was the moment I began to realize – it must be more complicated than that. If we don’t push ourselves, how are we to become rich and famous? Our egos will starve and shrivel into little balls of dust. We hunt for positions of power as we dangerously climb the corporate ladder. Who could believe that choosing a life of noninterference is the ultimate way to success? Human beings are power hungry and constantly looking to be better, faster, stronger. Your average Western thought leader will not accept a mantra such as this one. How can anyone journey through their life without running any interference? What does this look like? In fact, a lifestyle like this one seems to go directly against human nature for every reason you may be thinking. Pardon the sarcasm, but you see where I’m going with this. Maybe if I wander around aimlessly, nature will simply guide me to a successful, bountiful life. Please hold, let me cancel all my plans for the next week, stop applying for jobs, and take a trip to the garden behind my house. We we were meant to go with the flow and accept that whatever’s meant to be will be the end. In other words, this ancient Chinese practice advocates for the notion that everything happens for a reason. “Tao” (pronounced Dao) literally means “the way.” This mantra believes that a happy life can be achieved by following the course of natural events without interfering or overthinking.

This is how I feel about Taoism - a Chinese philosophy that advocates for a life of utter simplicity and noninterference. Intro to Taoism and How it’s Counterintuitive to Human NatureĮvery here and there we find ourselves bumping into foreign concepts that could be either one of two things – extremely simple, or, entirely beyond our realm of understanding.

The tao of pooh