I Still Love Lucy's Husband
In a previous post, I wrote about how a Tarot card reminded me of a life philosophy of the actor Desi Arnaz. You know Mr. Arnaz - he played the husband of "Lucy" on "I Love Lucy."
Here is another example of how his brilliant mind reminds me of some of the best advice the Tarot has to offer.
As executive producer of that show, he was breaking new ground. He wanted to use three cameras, not just one. And he wanted a live audience.
Fifty-seven years later, live sit-coms are still filmed in the same way.
Mr. Arnaz began by renting a movie soundstage, and outfitting it with bleachers in which the audience would sit.
Things looked good until the cameras rolled in. They squeaked! Arnaz's employees didn't want to appear incompetent to the boss, especially so early in the production, so they attempted to solve the problem. They oiled the wheels. Nope. They replaced the wheels. Nope. Different oil, different wheels. Nope, nope.
Finally, they had to take their problem to the boss.
Arnaz said, "There is probably something wrong with the floor, not the cameras."
The crew rubberized the floor, and the cameras stopped squeaking.
This is a perfect example of the Tarot card, The Hanged Man. The Hanged Man isn't what he sounds like; he isn't in danger. He is hanging upside down from a tree, laughing at the world around him. Why? Because the picture he sees is very different from the one everyone else is looking at, and it is highly informative. It's also funny - it's upside down!
The practice of observing a situation upside down can sometimes solve or improve a wide variety of situations. Sometimes life itself does the flipping for us, and all we have to do is notice!
For example, I shop at thrift stores where I buy expensive, beautiful clothing for only a few dollars. One day I thought, I deserve to shop in real stores! I'm better than this! So I visited the only stores that I could afford - the discount stores. I wandered around and wondered, where were the Donna Karan blazers, the Liz Claiborne blouses, the gorgeous Italian leather purses for a dollar?
I realized that my thrift stores had managed to spoil me rotten - while I rooted through their jumbled piles of other people's discarded clothing! (It's a good thing life flipped that image for me - I don't know if I could have done it myself.)
So may I suggest that the next time a situation baffles or annoys you, hang from a tree!