Dear Winnie the Pooh

To,

Winne the Pooh,
Hundred Acre Wood,
C/o Christopher Robin,
C/o AA Milne

Dear Winnie-the-Pooh,

You were never part of my childhood. I became acquainted with you only recently through my children.

Together with my kids, I would visit that “place in the Forest where a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.” Before I knew it, I began to love you. I began to welcome the gooey, sweet and warm feeling that seemed to fill me whenever we read one of your stories.



The unique thing about you was that you were a character within a make-believe world even within the make-believe book. Christopher Robin’s stuffed toys came to life. You were his pride. As Milne said, “Pooh is the favourite, of course, there's no denying it."

For a Bear with Very Litte Brain who is bothered by long words, you certainly made your presence felt. That was because what you lacked in Brain, you made up in Heart. You are loyal (you once said, “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you") caring (“Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness”) and dependable, always game for adventure, always willing to take the initiative (“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”). When Eeyore loses his tail, it was you who offered to find it for him. 

You take your friendships very seriously. "A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside." And while your philosophy of life sounds very deceptively simple, the longer I think about it, the more sense it seems to make. “Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”




Of course, you’re not without your faults. When you see honey, you stuff yourself to the point when you can’t even enter the door. Also, there are times when you think a little too highly of yourself. Or when you’re rather simple minded, slow to understand what is going on. Of course, confession time, when you say, “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?” I know exactly what you are talking about. That kind of thing happens to me all the time.



But we don’t hold your little quirks against you, because we can tell that your heart is in the right place.



In today’s world in which our children are under constant pressure to immerse themselves in some instructional activity or the other that will help them in the future, you stand out for your willingness to play and just do “Nothing.” And of course, the learning doesn’t stop for you. You learn to be assertive, considerate of others, respectful, lessons that stand us in better stead in the School of Life.