Pooh-Pooh-ing

Friday afternoon, as is my routine, I headed out of the office and stepped into the elevator, expecting the routine ride down to the first floor.  I got nothing of the sort.  A journey that usually takes no more than 5 minutes (with stops on every floor) ended up taking over an hour.

Seconds after I stepped in the elevator and the doors closed, the lights went out.  As I learned later, the power company had apparently decided to cut power to the area during a particularly violent electrical storm.  After the emergency lights and fan kicked in, I walked over to the phone and called down to the security desk to alert them that I was trapped.  Kudos to the building's security guards, who stayed on the phone with me through the entire hour and ten minutes I was stuck.  It never occurred to me to panic, or to continually buzz on the emergency alarm, or even to scream at the security guards to get me out.  I calmly, and as I had a strong enough signal on my cell phone, alerted the people who needed to know that I was stuck.  Then, figuring that it would be a while, I sat on the floor of the elevator car (aside: elevators should have either fold out seats or more plushly padded carpeting) and took out my book.  I learned a long time ago to always carry a book with me, no matter where I am going.

I was, at the time, reading The Tao of Pooh.  I finished the book sitting there on the elevator floor (and with over twenty minutes to go until I was rescued, I wish I had packed another).  I think what I got out of the book was more about where I was when I finished it than the book itself.  The lessons outlined in the book, the fundamentals of Taoism (as determined by the author) were quite appropriate for being stuck in a elevator.

I have always enjoyed the tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, from the first thumps down the stairs at the beginning of Winnie-the-Pooh, to the last look at the Hundred Acre Wood in The House at Pooh Corner, the bear and his friends have always been real to me.  Good books are like that, the characters are not just words on the page, not just images in your head, but they become real friends, and visits with them are as treasured as visits with other friends.  That is what appealed to me about The Tao of Pooh.  As part of the Spring Book Challenge I signed up for, I was to read a book about any religion.  And while I had taken a semester-long comparative religions class in high school, we covered only Western Religions.  Even the semester of Sunday School I had in college, focused on religions borne from the “Children of Abraham.”  So I knew very little about Eastern Thought in general, and less about Taoism in specific.  To have the fundamentals explained in terms of a character I not only knew, but thought of as a friend, was perfect.

The ideas of sitting still, of allowing things to happen in their own time, of not struggling against the stream, as described in the book, were perfect for my location as I was reading it.  Struggling in the elevator car would have worn me out and possibly endangered me.  By sitting calmly and quietly, I not only finished my book, but I did not impede my rescuers.  It was the perfect book for the moment, and just the lesson I needed.  I may have been completely happy never having had the experience, but I really do feel I am a better person for having had it -- or at least for having finished the book there and then.

Lao-Tse may not have believed in fate, or that everything happens for a reason, but I believe I am not too far off in thinking that he may have held that everything happens in its own time.  And the time for the elevator car to get stuck, the time for Entergy to cut the power to the building, the time for me to finish the book, was right then.  I am sure things happen for a reason, and it is not my place to question them.  My place is to walk with Pooh, holding the master’s hand, and experiencing life as it happens.  My place is to learn to become Pooh.  And Friday afternoon, there was no better place to experience that lesson than in the elevator car in which I was I was stuck.