Eeyore Effect

I picked up a book from the Friends of the Library book store, my favorite place to buy used books:  The Te of Piglet, by Benjamin Hoff. The pieces are from his chapter called The Eeyore Effect and it is about the Eeyores in our lives:

Benjamin tells Piglet, “Don’t mind Eeyore. He just likes to make others feel small, especially if they’re smaller than he is…That makes him look big, he thinks…”
Piglet: “I wouldn’t mind his being miserable by himself, if he enjoys it so. But why does he have to spread it around?”
“Eeyore’s are Realists, they say,” writes Benjamin about the Eeyores in the world, “But reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has…But one Eeyore effect (is that it) makes a great many people believe that they are powerless. And because they believe they’re powerless, they are.”
Benjamin tells a story: “There is a great bird   known as the P’eng. Its back appears as broad as a mountain range; its wings are like clouds across the sky. It rises up like a whirlwind until it breaks through the high mist and soars into the infinite blue.
“As it glides effortlessly along on its journey to the sea, a quail in the marsh looks up at it and laughs. ‘What does that bird thinks it’s doing?’ says the quail. ‘I jump up and fly a few feet; then I come down and flutter from here to there in the bushes. That I what flying is for! Who is that creature trying to fool?’
“…the small-minded cannot reach to that which is great, just as the experience of a few years cannot equal that of many. The mushroom of the morning knows not what takes place at the end of the month; the short-lived cicada has no awareness of what happens in the seasons beyond.”