What I'm Learning From Bob Ross

Bob Ross is the soft-spoken, afro-wearing painter who had a show on PBS for years. He's been dead for several years, but his legacy is as strong or stronger than it was when he was living. His PBS show on its face should never have worked. It's just a guy with a blank canvas who paints mostly landscapes, and by the end of the 30-minute show, there's a completed painting.

There are reruns of his show on Pluto TV and I'm absolutely fascinated watching. I'm not a painter, and I've never understood how it works. So to me, painting an entire picture in thirty minutes is almost like magic. My wife enjoys watching me watch Bob Ross because I talk to the television and express my wonder out loud: "Whoa! That's a tree! And he just created an entire lake with a few brush swipes!"

I was watching an episode last week in which Bob Ross slathered on some black paint with a pallet knife, then took a dry brush and just swiped it quickly back and forth several times and, lo and behold, what had been globs of black paint were now a range of mountains. And he talked about it like it was no big deal. Incredible! Such a simple action created art.

I think most of us do this every day - create art out of simplicity. I'm not talking about paints, or music, or crafting. I'm talking about the simple actions that we can do to make another person's day more colorful. Holding a door open. Letting someone turn into traffic in front of you. Calling a friend. Sending a note to someone for no reason.

Such things don't take an enormous amount of energy, but they can make an enormous amount of difference in someone's day. We can all be Bob Ross. That which seems simple to us can create beauty, appreciation, and maybe incredulity for someone else. Opportunities abound if we can get in the habit of looking for them.

Mike