Lisa notes

Did you ever watch the popular 1960s/70s TV sitcom Bewitched? Darrin, an ad executive, is married to Samantha, a witch who can twitch her nose and do magic.

One episode among many that stuck with me was from Season 3. When Samantha’s lamp breaks, her Aunt Clara, also a witch, uses her unreliable magical powers to summon an electrician.

It’s Benjamin Franklin from the 1700s.

Even though he was one of the smartest men of his time, he was befuddled by the simplest things in the modern culture.

I often wonder what it would be like to pop into our time from long ago. Even within my own lifetime, just today, I experienced things I never would have understood even 30 years ago. This morning I had a video conversation from my car with my grandson a hundred miles away in his home. I used GPS on my telephone to navigate directions. I hotspotted my mobile internet to my laptop to google the Bewitched TV show, finding the full episode of “My Friend Ben” from December 8, 1966, available to stream online via Apple TV.

Facetime? Hotspot? Google? Streaming? Apple TV?

Who could have dreamed of this? Not even Benjamin Franklin, I’d guess. (But maybe the Jetsons?)

And what’s yet to come?

Chang Yee, known as “The Silent Traveler,” was a Chinese poet and artist, 1903-1977. He often wrote from a “sideways look” perspective, noticing things in other cultures that didn’t make sense from his own.

I read about Chang Yee in Shaun Bythell’s book, Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops.

“Yee’s appeal was based on his unusual way of looking at the world. He interpreted the everyday with a ‘positive curiosity’; he was acutely aware that even the most mundane of activities—from washing clothes to walking dogs—could become a subject of bewildering fascination when observed through the eyes of a stranger who lacks the benefit of familiar cultural reference points.”

Can we do this too, even inside our own culture? Can we imagine what it would be like to see a TV for the first time? Or a hair blow dryer? Or a microwave oven?

Can we go even further and imagine with “bewildering fascination” what it would be like to hear a current political view for the first time? Or a religious dogma? Or any other topic that might seem controversial to someone removed from our culture?

If we can imagine it—with a “positive curiosity”—maybe we can soften toward others who can’t understand us. Maybe we can be more patient with those who disagree. Maybe we can show grace to those who think we’re crazy.

Can curiosity expand this direction?

Yes, I believe so.

I can’t remember if Benjamin Franklin did indeed fix Samantha’s lamp before Aunt Clara remembered how to reverse her spell, sending him back into his own era.

Maybe I’ll get curious enough to rewatch the episode and find out.

Were you a Bewitched fan, too? Share in the comments.

Try one more time. Surely this stain will come off the carpet.

So my husband Jeff scrubs again. But he makes no progress.

The Stubborn Stain

I had first noticed the stain on our living room carpet only a few minutes earlier. It was an odd shade of copper, unlike most of our stains from spills of apple juice or tea or greasy shoe prints.

Jeff and I toss around ideas of its origin. Trying to be polite and not blame each other (or ourselves), we blame the only other person not currently in the room, but who had been in the house that day: our 2-year-old grandson, an easy target.

It was probably his shoes, we say. We’d played outside right before naptime, and likely hadn’t noticed he’d perhaps stepped in mud. He was now safely tucked away sound asleep, minus his shoes. We could check them later.

But for now, Jeff, our expert stain-remover, pulls out his cleaning spray and gets to work.

Yet the stain remains as strong as ever.

After multiple attempts at removing it, I suggest he give up. I say it’s one more reason we need new flooring.

Through the baby monitor, I hear our sleeping grandson make a sound. I flip the monitor towards me for a clearer view of him in his crib.

Just at that moment, Jeff announces: The stain just disappeared!

Try a New Perspective

Sometimes our old tried-and-true solutions don’t work on every problem like we expect them to. For instance, if you want to remove a stain, you typically have to just clean it up.

But when our old solutions don’t work, instead of trying a different solution, sometimes we just try harder the old way.

What we might need instead is a new perspective.

In my year of Curiosity, I want to remain open to new ways of approaching old problems.

• Maybe that will mean stepping sideways to see them from a different angle.
• Or stepping away altogether for a minute for a mental break and reset.
• Or asking someone else how they would manage them that I wouldn’t consider on my own.

After our initial shock, the magic of our disappearing stain was easily explained. There had been no stain in the first place.

What we had seen on the carpet was simply an odd reflection coming from the baby monitor.

By moving the monitor, the “stain” vanished.

Not all our problems can be so easily solved. In fact, the vast majority of our problems likely won’t evaporate by a slight turn of perspective.

But if some of them can, might it be worth a try? Especially if we discover the problem wasn’t real to begin with, or will disappear altogether, if we’ll just think about it differently for a minute?

It’s worth being curious about.

Especially if it results in a soul-cleansing explosion of laughter when you realize you’ve been cleaning up an imaginary mess all along, just like our mysterious stain.

Have you ever had a problem disappear once you changed your perspective about it? Do you struggle with seeing new solutions to old problems? Share in the comments.

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