Cottleston Pie

A Permission Slip for Being Yourself

By A. A. Milne

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
Why does a chicken? I don’t know why.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie,
A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.
Ask me a riddle and I reply
Cottleston Cottleston Cottleston Pie.

(From Winnie-the-Pooh)

---

I carried a Pooh Bear with me everywhere as a child.
(Okay, my mom wouldn’t let me take him to school, but other than that, he went everywhere.)

He was not plush.
He was not symbolic.
He was not nostalgic.

He was real.

In the way the Velveteen Rabbit was real.
In the way only children understand reality.

I loved the Hundred Acre Wood. I loved Christopher Robin and Tigger and Piglet and Rabbit and Eeyore. And I definitely loved the Heffalump.

And I loved this poem.

Cottleston Pie.

It sounded silly. It sounded circular.
It sounded like the best sort of nonsense.

But now, in my sixties, I realize: it is actually a Mystic’s mantra.

---

A fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly.

This is not philosophy. It is freedom.
(Bear with me — pun entirely intended.)

The tragedy of so many lives is not aging. It is spending decades trying to bird when you are a fly. Or trying to fly when you are a fish. Or trying to whistle when your mouth was not shaped for it.

Cottleston Pie says: Stop. A thing is itself. And so are you.

You are not required to be the cleverest voice in the room.
You are not required to be trendy.
You are not required to rebrand yourself into relevance.

You are required to be YOU.

Winnie-the-Pooh was always 100% his rolly-polly self. He was never once ashamed of his tummy or his love of hunny.

You are You. And that is enough.

And that is not small.

---

A fish can’t whistle and neither can I.

There is such gentleness in that line. It gives permission.

It lets us off the hook for so many things we simply cannot do.

No shame.
No optimization plan.
No webinar called Unlock the Whistle Within.

Just: I cannot whistle. And that is fine.

There is deep dignity in knowing what you are not built for.

And this sort of dignity is most often found later in life — when we’ve become just a wee bit too tired to care so much about what others think.

Maybe you are not built for constant output.
Maybe you are not built for argument.
Maybe you are not built for the frantic speed of younger movements.
Maybe you are not built for keeping up with the neighbors.

Good.

The oak is not built to be bamboo.
The river is not built to be a mountain.
The wind is not built to be a stone.

And you are not built to be everything to everyone else.

You have ripened.
You’ve earned your stripes (and your wrinkles).
You have earned whatever modicum of peace you have found after the long journey to get all the way here.

Hopefully life is softer now. Slower. For your sake, I pray it is.

And hopefully you are stronger in different ways.

Let it be. Let yourself relax into where you are now.

Lean into your Pooh-ness. Have another slice of Cottleston Pie.

---

Why does a chicken? I don’t know why.

I smile every single time I read that line.

For decades I tried to understand everything.

I studied.
I reflected.
I researched.
I synthesized.
I expanded mental chambers.
I tried to solve existence.

Cottleston Pie says:

You do not have to do this anymore.

A chicken chickens.
A river rivers.
A wind winds.
A you do you — warts and all. No more apologies required.

This is not anti-intellectual.

It is pre-intellectual.

It is the Tao before we start talking about the Tao.

Cottleston Pie is about our Inner Nature.

And Inner Nature does not explain itself.

It expresses itself, and does not apologize.

And hopefully we can express it to the world now in a way that is far less edited and far more authentic.

---

The Quiet Rebellion

You may think this small. It is not small. It is enormous.

Because Cottleston Pie is the quiet rebellion against becoming what you are not.

When someone asks:

“Why are you this way?”
Cottleston Pie.

“Shouldn’t you be more…?”
Cottleston Pie.

“What’s the grand theory of life?”
Cottleston Pie.

It is not dismissal. It is hard-won self-alignment.

Things are as they are. You are as you are.

And when you relax into that — when you stop rearranging yourself to fit expectations — something unclenches.

There is a glorious freedom in this.

---

The Blessing of Later Life

One of the blessings that sometimes arrives later in life is this:

You stop pretzeling.
You stop contorting.
You stop climbing trees when you are clearly a fish *(or a dolphin).

There is relief in no longer trying to be impressive.

There is relief in no longer counting carbs for approval.
Or curating personality for neighbors.
Or polishing edges that were never meant to be smooth.

Pooh is small. Round. Hungry. Honest. And thus, he is strangely free.

I was never going to be a Cover Girl, no matter how hard I tried.

I am embracing my Pooh-ness in my sixties. And I find this utterly glorious.

---

Your Cottleston Pie

What is the thing you do without strain?

What feels like breathing?

What returns no matter how many times you try to be something else?

That is your Cottleston Pie.

No erudition. No grandiosity. No over-analysis.

Just: I am what I am.
(Yes, that sounds suspiciously like Popeye — but I digress.)

And that is enough. Finally, at long last, that is enough

With hunny on my sleeve and a 62-year-old smile,
Cheryl A. Page

A.A. Milne