Move the Buckles, Ask the Elephant

Yesterday evening, Kara and I hung a mirror over our new fireplace.

The mirror has a minor bit of personal history—it was a housewarming gift from a good friend of mine, back in my early 20s. It was a nice one, by my estimate. But apparently not up to modern standards. Kara asked my permission to touch it up with a bit of gold paint on the frame. I didn’t see any harm, and I have to admit it does have a whole new look, just from that.

The mirror had always hung horizontally everywhere it’s ever been on a wall. That just always made sense to me. But Kara wanted to turn it vertically, to make it more “dramatic,” and to add height above the fireplace. I didn't see any harm in this either, though it seemed weird to me.

These days I’m trying not to let my first impulse of “no, that isn’t the right way” be a barrier to trying things.

So, basically, when it came to this mirror I was already outside my comfort zone. A little. It wasn’t like I was worried it would catch the house on fire or something. It was just that “it had always been this way,” and I was having to adjust to the idea of it being that way instead.

Kara also wanted to rest it on the fireplace mantle, rather than hang it directly on the wall. Though she did want to anchor it to the wall somehow. This, too, was weird to me. I mean… mirrors hang on walls. But yeah, ok…. sure. And I put an anchor on the wall for it.

But then it was time to flip the mirror vertically and somehow attach it to that anchor on the wall. And that’s when my brain stalled.

“These days I’m trying not to let my first impulse of “no, that isn’t the right way” be a barrier to trying things. ”

When I’d first gotten the mirror, I attached two metal loops to the frame and I ran a multi-strand wire between these. I had mounted the hooks close to the top corners of the mirror, as it was oriented horizontally. And it had always been kind of a trick to get the thing on the wall and keep that wire hidden.

In fact, over the years and with dozens of moves I had tried numerous methods of doing that—from mounting two hooks a good distance apart on the wall to twisting and tightening the wire turnbuckle style, enough that it stayed below the frame. It had been like this for years. Like I said, I got it in my twenties, and as of last month I've hit 50 years old. So for almost half my life, this was the way.

Now, though, it was time to rethink things. It was time to turn the mirror on its side (from my point of view), and that meant reorienting those little buckles.

My first attempt was to just move one of the buckles so that it was relocated from what was now the “bottom” of the mirror to the corner opposite its mate at the mirror’s new “top.” This meant that, once gain, I had the buckles attached to the frame near the top corners. And, once again, I was struggling to get the wire tight enough that it would anchor the mirror to the wall but wouldn’t show above the frame. And, once again, it was going to be tricky.

And then I had what we will call “the aha moment.”

Why was I mounting those buckles so close to the top? If I just moved them down closer to the middle of the frame, the slack in the wire would work for us instead of against us. It would anchor the mirror in place, and it wouldn’t be visible at all!

Yes… yes, you’re seeing that right. This is a problem that literally took me thirty years to figure out.

Move the buckles.

That worked, by the way. With the buckles attached at a lower point on the mirror it hung like a dream—no worries, no concerns, no problem. I’d just been hanging it wrong for three decades, that’s all.

This is a lesson that’s applicable to my daily life, so I assume it will also be applicable to yours: When you’re facing a challenge, when your way of thinking doesn’t allow for an answer, start from zero and think about it in a new way.

In philosophy, this is sometimes called “beginner’s mind.” And it’s the source of genius.

Kids are great at this, by the way. For example, think of three answers to this question:

“How do I put an elephant in my refrigerator?”

And yes, I mean a real, full-sized elephant. Not a photo of an elephant. Not a stuffed toy. The real thing, trunk and all.

Go… I’ll give you ten minutes.

Back? Ok. I’m betting you thought of all sorts of interesting things. But I’m also betting that all of them had to do with dealing with the logistics and the physics of getting a big thing into a smaller thing.

When I tried this with Kara, she came up with some… well… gruesome stuff. Like cutting the elephant into pieces, or burning it and turning it into ash. Let’s just say I’m not eager to make her mad any time soon.

Your ideas may be similar, and there’s nothing wrong with any of them. But your adult mind, with all of its experiences and years of routines and everyday problem solving, came up against the physical limits of the exercise. The problem, to you, was “How do I get the big thing into the small thing?”

When this question was posed to a group of kids, though, their answers were a little different.

“Open the door and ask him to go in.”

“Put peanut butter inside and leave the door open.”

“Ride him like a horse and go inside.”

See the difference? To these kids, the task wasn’t a problem of logistics and physical dimensions. It was about convincing the elephant. Coaxing, luring, guiding.

That is beginner’s mind in action. And it’s a powerful tool.

If we can cultivate that way of looking at things, whenever we’re stuck on a problem, new solutions may appear out of nowhere.

Give it a try, the next time you find yourself stuck. Move the buckles. Ask the elephant.

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