At age 27, Pooh Bear Again

The loquat trees in my yard are fruiting out. Clusters of tart yellow and green bending branches with their weight. With sharp shears, I clip my share of the ripest. It feels like a win-win. The tree lifts its branches in relief and I sink my teeth into the sour fruit, spitting the seeds in the creek, propagating the tree’s offspring.

It’s been a good bit of time since I’ve thought about Winnie the Pooh. Around 15 years I’d guess. But he is summoned to mind by the smell of bubbling loquat fruit and sugar turning to jam on the stovetop in front of me. Isn’t it funny how smells can do that? I jar the jam into very trendy mason jars. Scrubbing the pot clean in the sink, I can’t help but see Pooh’s sticky hands clasped in the rapture of a full belly, a smile on his tufted cheeks.

I’ve just watched the Christopher Robin movie if you can’t tell, released in 2018. In it, Ewan McGregor plays the now-adult Christopher as he returns for the first time in years to the Hundred Acre Wood. As a grown-up, he has lost his imagination in busy-ness and overwork and is on the brink of losing his family as a result. Instead of the whimsical young boy in A.A. Milne’s original works, we are now shown the loss of childhood lived out in Christopher Robin.

It’s hard to watch. Where there was once unbridled imagination and possibility, there is now yoked drudgery. Where once were entire afternoons spent in reverie, there is now an incessant hum of hurry. But it’s hard to blame Christopher for his behavior. Adulthood comes wrapped in responsibility. He works hard in order to save the jobs of his down-sizing department. To provide for his family, he must be away from them at work.

Pooh can’t wrap his little brain around the adult Christopher Robin he now sees. Again and again throughout the movie, we see the clash of child and adulthood as Pooh’s candorful questions poke at his old friend.

“There’s more to life than balloons and honey,” Christopher says. “Are you sure?” Pooh replies. 

Pooh cuts to the quick of the adulting dilemma: Somewhere along the string of life, we arrive at a lot of have to’s between us and happiness. I have to get this promotion so I have to stay late. I have to be relevant, so I’m glued to Twitter. I have no Saturday plans, so I have to get that Sunday brunch, yo!

Listen, I’m not here to be the Brunch Grinch. There’s a place for chicken and waffles in the world. There is a place also for the responsibilities of adulthood. There’s no denying it. But as I chase the newest and next, as I add another have-to to my contentment equation, I feel the price of my happiness going up. Like Christopher Robin, I feel trapped into a way of doing things that involves an ever-increasing amount of my time, money or both.

Over the course of the movie, Christopher Robin is reminded of what truly makes him happy: Creativity and imagination and being in the woods with his family and friends. He once knew this. Now, Pooh teaches it to him again. It’s important to me that Christopher doesn’t discover something new. He remembers something old, but forgotten.

To me, that is the invitation of Pooh bear: to quit the search and remember happiness in its simplest form.

In our age, there are 1001 influencers guiding us to our happiest self. I think it’s more likely that we already know what makes us come alive. Happiness needs to be a decision I make for myself.

Could it be as simple as balloons and honey?

I spread loquat jam on a piece of overdone toast. I cut it diagonally as my mother did. The jam has a bite to it. I’m looking out the window at a bright Spring morning. Maybe I’ll ask my buddy Will if he wants to throw the baseball later…

YO! Thanks for reading. This is an Idea in Process. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Happiness Equation. I think if I were to boil my happiness down to 3 words, it would be Outdoors, Relationship, Play. What would your 3 be?

Here is a New Yorker piece on Pooh if you’re interested: The Moral Clarity of “Christopher Robin”
Here is a Barna Piece on Gen Z (51% of Gen Z-ers report happiness as the #1 goal in life)

Randomness: I am a BIG Ewan McGregor fan. If you want to talk Long Way Round drop me a note.

foggy lens

loquat fruit are cousins of kumquats, and are used in everything from medicine to wine, predominantly in Asia.