This clip from the first Mr. Bean movie has been in the back of my head since I first saw it. While it’s meant to be comedic, it strikes me how valuable it can be for teaching an important life lesson. Even if you’ve never ruined an iconic painting through a series of mishaps, you might still have pulled a Mr. Bean one or more times in your life. Let’s examine how to avoid that and what to do instead, shall we?
For his first mistake, he felt a sneeze coming on when he was standing right in front of the painting. Even though he had more than enough time to step away from the painting, he figured all was well and stayed put right in front of the painting after the sneeze appeared to go away. That misplaced confidence allowed a surprise sneeze to mess up the painting. The whole issue could have been avoided if he had walked away until he was certain there’d be no sneeze and then still stayed far enough away to avoid messing up the painting if the surprise sneeze had still appeared.
Next, he wiped the painting off with a cloth only to find that ink on the cloth stained the painting. He seemed to have assumed that the cloth was completely clean and thus safe to use. That assumption escalated a relatively minor problem into a much bigger issue. A quick glance at the cloth would have revealed the ink and prompted him to either use a clean part of the cloth or look for something else to wipe off his sneeze residue, which would have prevented the painting from getting any dirtier than it already was.
Panicking, he then used lacquer thinner to successfully remove the ink. Unfortunately, it also dissolved the woman’s face in the panting, and his frantic wiping of it only further compounded the problem. Since he seemed not to know what the lacquer thinner would do to the painting, he’d have been better off reading the label or asking someone who knew about its effects instead of using it without knowing the risks. Unfortunately, he didn’t ask anyone else for help until the painting had already been ruined. If he had gotten help much earlier on, the painting likely could have been saved, and a huge crisis averted.
One of the most important things Mr. Bean failed to do was slow down as soon as the problem started. Taking more time to assess the situation would have allowed his emotions to settle. He could then have found out what was needed to remove the problem instead of making it worse by rushing into a series of mistakes out of fear, making a fairly small problem massive, and having no idea how to fix it. When under stress, bad ideas sound good, and good ideas rarely occur.
There are many times that I’ve made things far worse by trying to fix a mess without knowing how to do so. There are also many times I’ve had to clean up messes that others have made far worse. On most of those occasions, someone else made things far worse because they wouldn’t hear me out, consider what I was saying, and make even a small change to prevent disaster until disaster had already struck. This is one of the many reasons I wish everyone would actually listen to me and give some thought to what I say instead of interrupting me, immediately dismissing my ideas, responding with their own ideas while ignoring mine, or turning a conversation into a fight. So many disasters at work, family events, social interactions, and elsewhere would have been either minimized or avoided entirely if they’d slowed down, considered what I said, and then done it. My dog Sawyer likely would have gotten more time to live, and might even still be alive today, if my concerns and points about his health had been heeded. Instead, he’s been dead nearly four years and I’ve only fairly recently healed most of the pain around his death.
Following the above recommendations will likely keep you from getting in trouble in the first place. If you do get in trouble anyway, it’s better to get in trouble for causing a small problem than to get in trouble for creating a gigantic mess. Things worked out ok for Mr. Bean in his first movie. Real life isn’t a movie, however, so you might not get so lucky if you let a small problem snowball into a huge disaster.