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resilient posted this from Winnie the Pooh:
‘Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.’ -
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Oh, I love Winnie-the-Pooh! Oddly enough, I never read Winnie-the-Pooh as a child. I was 24 years old when a colleague from work named Ron, a fan himself, introduced me to the books. I read the second one first, “The House at Pooh Corner,” and right there on the first page of Chapter One it said this:
One day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to do, he thought he would do something,
If you have nothing to do, what an inspired idea to “do something”! That was the first chuckle, right there on the very second line. It continued:
so he went to Piglet’s house to see what Piglet was doing. It was still snowing as he stumped over the white forest track, and he expected to find Piglet warming his toes in front of his fire,
What a delightfully comforting image!
but to his surprise he saw that the door was open, and the more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn’t there.
Another chuckle. As if “looking longer” would eventually make Piglet magically appear!
“He’s out,” said Pooh sadly. “That’s what it is. He’s not in. I shall have to go a fast Thinking Walk by myself. Bother!”
But first he thought that he would knock very loudly just to make quite sure… and while he waited for Piglet not to answer, he jumped up and down to keep warm…
Now this is absolutely brilliant! As soon as I read that sentence, as I later remarked to my wife (and she laughingly agreed): “This isn’t a children’s book. This is an adult book! It’s full of subtle psychological insights.” Milne wrote that Pooh waited for Piglet not to answer! Isn’t that the truth of what we’re really doing in situations like that? We say we’re “waiting for someone to answer,” but in reality by that time we’re convinced it’s not going to happen, and all we’re really waiting for is the expiration of a minute’s silence so that we can comfortably walk away without feeling guilty that we didn’t give them enough time to answer!
There’s a great deal of wisdom in Winnie-the-Pooh! These are excellent books for all children from the age of about 3 to 100 plus.
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