The Tao of Pooh

There was a man who disliked seeing his footprints and his shadow. He decided to escape from them, and began to run. But as he ran along, more footprints appeared, while his shadow easily kept up with him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without stopping, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion and died.
If he had stood still, there would have been no footprints. If he had rested in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared.

Let’s put it this way: if you want to be healthy, relaxed, and contented, just watch what a Bisy Backson does and then do the opposite. There’s one now, pacing back and forth, jingling the loose coins in his pocket, nervously glancing at his watch. He makes you feel tired just looking at him. The chronic Backson always seems to have to be going somewhere, at least on a superficial, physical level. He doesn’t go out for a walk, though; he doesn’t have time.

Our Bisy Backson religions, sciences, and business ethics have tried their hardest to convince us that there is a Great Reward waiting for us somewhere, and that what we have to do is spend our lives working like lunatics to catch up with it. Whether it’s up in the sky, behind the next molecule, or in the executive suite, it’s somehow always farther along than we are—just down the road, on the other side of the world, past the moon, beyond the stars…

“I was having an awful dream,” [Pooh] said.
“Oh?”
“Yes. I’d found a jar of honey…,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“What’s awful about that?” I asked.
“It kept moving,” said Pooh. “They’re not supposed to do that. They’re supposed to sit still.”
“Yes, I know.”
“But whenever I reached for it, this jar of honey would sort of go someplace else.”
“A nightmare,” I said.
“Lots of people have dreams like that,” I added reassuringly.
“Oh,” said Pooh. “About Unreachable jars of honey?”
“About the same sort of thing,” I said. “That’s not unusual. The odd thing, though, is that some people live like that.”
“Why?” asked Pooh.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose because it gives them Something to Do.”
“It doesn’t sound like much fun to me,” said Pooh.
No, it doesn’t.

From the Miserable Puritan came the Restless Pioneer, and from him, the Lonely Cowboy, always riding off into the sunset, looking for something just down the trail. From this rootless, dissatisfied ancestry has come the Bisy Backson, who, like his forefathers, has never really felt at home, at peace, with this Friendly Land.
[…]
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. The urge to grow and develop, present in all forms of life, becomes perverted in the Bisy Backson’s mind into a constant struggle to change everything (the Bulldozer Backson) and everyone (the Bigoted Backson) else but himself, and interfere with things he has no business interfering with, including practically every form of life on earth.

The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important. Enjoyment of the process is the secret that erases the myths of the Great Reward and Saving Time. Perhaps this can help to explain the everyday significance of the word Tao, the Way.
What could we call that moment before we begin to eat the honey? Some would call it anticipation, but we think it’s more than that. We would call it awareness. It’s when we become happy and realize it, if only for an instant. By Enjoying the Process, we can stretch that awareness out so that it’s no longer only a moment, but covers the whole thing. Then we can have a lot of fun. Just like Pooh.