The Tree of Obvious Wisdom
🌳This month’s random act of silliness
[Where we celebrate humans being magnificently, intentionally silly]
Someone installed a metal plaque on a tree that says "THE TREE."
Not a sticky note that'll wash away in the first British drizzle.
Not a temporary sign that'll flutter off in autumn winds.
A proper, screwed-in, weather-defying, built-to-last metal plaque.
Someone woke up one morning and thought: "You know what this tree needs? Official documentation."
"What should we engrave on it?"
"Just... THE TREE."
"Perfect. Make it permanent."
This isn't accidental silliness. This isn't casual silliness.
This is premeditated, professional-grade silliness.
🤔 PROFOUND-ISH PONDERINGS
[Where we overthink silly things until they crack and wisdom leaks out]
Let's talk about the obvious. (Because apparently, that's what we do now.)
THE CORPORATE THESAURUS
Obvious (adj.)
Silly definition: So clear that we need a metal plaque to point it out
Profound definition: The wisdom hiding in plain sight while we search for complexity
Have you noticed how we're all too sophisticated to state the obvious these days?
We don't write "DOOR" on doors
We don't label our chairs "CHAIR"
We definitely don't point at trees and say "TREE"
Instead, we:
"Leverage cross-functional synergies"
"Optimize strategic deliverables"
"Paradigm shift our core competencies"
But here's the thing about obvious things: they're only obvious when someone points them out.
At the risk of stating the obvious... Maybe we're all too busy being sophisticated to notice what's right in front of us. Like how we spend hours in meetings discussing "innovative solutions" while ignoring the simple answers staring us in the face.
In our rush to complicate things, we've forgotten the art of stating the obvious:
We label our emails "URGENT" but not our trees "TREE"
We create complex systems to track happiness but forget to smile
We write thousand-word strategic plans but can't write "this is a door" on a door
Maybe there's profound wisdom in simply seeing what is.
Maybe we don't need more strategic frameworks.
Maybe we just need more obvious plaques.
Or maybe I'm overthinking a silly plaque. (But overthinking silly things is literally the point of this newsletter, so...)
🎬 SILLINESS REFILL STATION
[Where we share reliable sources of silliness for emergency refills]
You know that feeling when your silliness tank runs dangerously low? When the world feels a bit too serious, a bit too heavy?
That's when I find myself, almost unconsciously, turning on Friends. Any episode. Any season. It's my go-to silliness refill station.
Take Season 6, Episode 6: "The One on the Last Night." Ross is homeless, his second marriage has crumbled, and life's looking pretty grim. Then Joey, in a moment of pure brilliance, builds a fort out of Ross’s moving boxes which have completed taken over his apartment.
Before we know it, three grown men are playing in a cardboard fortress, and just like that – problems forgotten, dignity abandoned, pure joy achieved. I've watched this episode countless times, and every single time, I feel my chuckles & giggles rising and sanity level returning.
Because that's the magic of Friends – no matter how crazy or sad or upsetting the situations are (divorce, homelessness, unemployment), there's always room for a cardboard fort.
And before we get into a heated debate about the best Friends episode – let's agree that all Friends-induced silliness is valid and welcome. No judgment here!
✉️ JOIN THE SILLINESS SCOUT SQUAD
[Where we recruit fellow observers of deliberate silliness]
Starting January 2025, we're on a mission to document acts of intentional silliness in the wild.
Spotted a moment of committed silliness? Send it my way! Extra points for:
Unnecessarily official documentation of obvious things
Adults forgetting how to adult
Deliberate acts of joy
Because if we're going to be silly, we might as well be serious about it.
P.S. This newsletter is a delicate dance between profound and playful. Like trying to eat a formal business lunch while wearing a red nose. Which, come to think of it, might be next month's experiment... 🤔