Music And Living
“How would you explain it, Pooh?”
“With a song,” he said. “A little something I just made up.”
“Go ahead.”
“Certainly … (cough).”
How can you get very far,
If you don’t know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don’t know What You’ve Got?
And if you don’t know Which To Do
Of all the things in front of you,
Then what you’ll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.
“That’s it,” he said, leaning back and closing his eyes.
“A Masterpiece.”
“Well, better than average, maybe.”
Sooner or later, we are bound to discover some things about ourselves that we don’t like. But once we see they’re there, we can decide what we want to do with them. Do we want to get rid of them completely, change them into other things, or use them in beneficial ways? The last two approaches are often especially Useful, since they avoid head-on conflict, and therefore minimize struggle. Also, they allow those transformed characteristics to be added to the list of things we have that help us out.
In a similar manner, instead of struggling to erase what are referred to as negative emotions, we can learn to use them in positive ways. We could describe the principle like this: while pounding on the piano keys may produce noise, removing them doesn’t exactly further the creation of music. The principles of Music and Living aren’t all that different, we think.
“Wouldn’t you say, Pooh?”
“Say what?” asked Pooh, opening his eyes.
“Music and Living —”
“The same thing,” said Pooh.