Grow Your Own Creativity 🍄

Creativity involves generating ideas 💡 that are novel, surprising, and compelling. Creative people aren’t only intellectually capacble of coming up with such ideas. They also are people who have a creative attitude toward life. But that doesn’t mean they can teach other people how to be creative or even how to understand seemingly simple things, but it’s worth a try. 

“I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you.” 

Creative people are motivated to solve problems in a creative way. They may use creativity to level up their attitude, for example. This means we can up ours so they can UP theirs. 

That joke still makes me laugh. 

Although average levels of creativity may vary from one time or place to another (Dai & Sternberg, 2094) the biggest variable in creativity is simply a mindset toward thinking in novel, surprising, and compelling ways — and this mindset can be taught. 

In the same way explaining a joke always makes it funnier. 🌼 

So how does HTTF teach others to be creative? In this blog, I consider responses to this question. I think about it with every post. First, I review the major humor theories and pedagogical programs for teaching thinking. Then, I noodle 🍜 on those ideas for a bit, considering my thoughts in relation to a variety of theories of creativity. 

Then I write silly posts. Meaningful posts. Cryptic posts. Badly riddled with typos posts. And somehow in between describing creativity and applying it, I laugh. Then I talk about laughing. Then I change my name to Laughing. Then I laugh again, unabashedly. 

Woke Mind Virus

 

Fergus caught the woke-mind virus from an improperly sanitized library book.

By breakfast, he could see every side of an argument.

By lunch, he understood why the ant 🐜 felt anxious.

By dinner, he had apologized to the mosquito 🦟 he had been trying to eat and offered it a tiny napkin in recompense.

Life became complicated. 🤔 

His friends invited him to leap to conclusions, but Fergus insisted on examining the evidence first. 🔍 When the pond divided over whether lily pads belonged to the frogs 🐸 or the pond, he suggested they ask the lily pads.

They declined to comment.

Eventually, Fergus made peace with his condition. He bought a small cushion, brewed some coffee ☕️ and opened a woke mind consulting practice beneath a fern. 

His sign read:

FERGUS T. FROG

Empathy, Critical Thinking & Occasional Ribbiting

Flies Seen by Appointment Only

Business was excellent, although lunch remained ethically challenging.

Please Accept My Sincerest Oopsie Daisies 🌼

 

Professor Penelope Piffle had made a very small mistake.

She had accidentally declared war on Belgium.

It happened while she was ordering waffles. The diplomatic breakfast form offered two boxes:

🌼 Belgian
🌼 Hostile action against Belgium

Penelope sneezed, the pen slipped, and by lunchtime three ambassadors had resigned, four generals were consulting maps 🗺️ and Luxembourg had begun behaving very mysteriously.

Penelope rushed to the Ministry of Peace carrying a bouquet of daisies 🌼 and wearing her emergency apology hat:

PLEASE ACCEPT MY SINCEREST OOPSIE DAISIES 🌼 

The Minister examined it gravely.

“How sincere?”

Penelope pointed to the silver sticker on the brim.

“My attitude is adjustable.”

This was unprecedented. International apologies were usually rigid, one-size-fits-all affairs. The Minister summoned the Belgian ambassador, who arrived with two lawyers, a historian, and a waffle iron. 🧇 

Penelope explained the sneeze. 🤧 

The lawyers examined the form. The historian confirmed that wars had begun for sillier reasons. The ambassador stared at the hat 🧢 

“May I try it on?”

He adjusted the strap, looked in the mirror, and immediately confessed that Belgium had misplaced one of France’s rivers in 1839 and had been too embarrassed to mention it. 🙈 

The French ambassador was called. He put on the hat and admitted France had never noticed.

Soon every diplomat wanted a turn.

Spain apologized for the Inquisition again, just to be safe. Britain expressed regret concerning several centuries. 🫖 Switzerland confessed that neutrality was sometimes a convenient way to avoid choosing a restaurant. Luxembourg revealed that it had been behaving mysteriously because nobody ever asked what it was doing.

By sunset, the war had been canceled and replaced with afternoon tea. 🍵 

Penelope received the International Medal for Preventing the Conflict She Had Personally Started. Belgium kept the daisies. 🌼 The United Nations ordered 193 hats.

They are stored behind glass for emergencies, with a small brass plaque beneath them:

IN THE EVENT OF DIPLOMATIC CATASTROPHE, ADJUST SINCERITY TO FIT.

1,440 Laughs

 

"In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact." — Les Brown 

It also means we have 1.440 moments to laugh. Now, I’m not suggesting we laugh all daylong because that would exhausting and a sure fire way to find yourself being admitted to a hospital for testing purposes. 

Typically, people let one thing bug them — justified or not — and that takes away time that they won’t get back. I do it. You do it. We all do it. 

Think of time like currency. If someone takes $5 dollars from that $1,440, you’re not going to burn the rest 🔥 just because they took a few bucks from you. That would be illogical and expensive. 

It’s the same thing with time. It is illogical and expensive to give up the rest of your minutes to feeling badly because someone bugs you for a few minutes. 

Not everyone thinks this way. I know, I’ve tried to explain how important it is to allow yourself to play, to relax, to enjoy life when you can even if you’re working. You can be thinking complex thoughts but they don’t have to be unpleasant. I work in complex industries for a living. I still enjoy the rush of thinking about complex matters. The thrill of learning, of working on something new and beneficial. I can even perform complex calculus or build a complex capital stack for a project without feeling serious or somber on the inside. Win the contract, don’t win the contract. At least I get to noodle on something new. 

Whether we get one life or many, each moment of each day is a gift. For some this gift is met with great cognitive and emotional challenge. I’m not talking about real life suffering. I’m talking about the kind of suffering that never really happens but takes away from your life. The kind of unnecessary, self-inflicted hogwash-like suffering that belongs in a novel, not in our hearts and minds. The kind we have real control over. 

These people spread that suffering like bacterium entering the water supply. You might not be able to change how they think and respond to life’s endless array of challenges, but you can change how you respond to their downer vibe. 

Trust me, it’s not easy. I have such a bummer vibe that I have been navigating all my life. Not mine. Someone else’s. Someone that I can’t just say, have a nice day and be done. Plenty of books recommend ejecting these people from our lives. We can’t all do that. We don’t all want to do that. Boundaries are great but they don’t fix the problem. The only things that work in these situations is to have a rich inner life. To play, to play publicly so others feel like they have permission to play and be silly, and to give each conflict the most ridiculous backstory that you’re laughing instead of yelling or crying or whatever. 

Whether you spend that time laughing, thinking fascinating thoughts, helping a friend, going for a hike, riding your bike, reading a book, writing a post, playing with your kids and pets, enjoying a movie, playing video games, or just taking a leisurely stroll, just remember: 1.440 moments await you. 

Does Your CEO Have A Sense of Humor?

 

The most successful people I know have a good sense of humor. I’ve been studying and writing about the philosophy of humor and gone so far as to change my name to Laughing — as a literal, philosophical joke experiment — just to get a laugh. 

I’m still waiting. In the meantime, I’m making myself laugh. Not at other people, not my style. But at ideas and being confident enough to play publicly, which is entirely what this blog has been since 2011. I wanted to make myself publicly accountable for the jokes I was telling, to build a repository, and to really explore why people laugh, its benefits, its pitfalls, its use, and its deeper meaning into what we call human nature.

For me, that’s a thing of fascination. Not so much the humor, tho I love a good laugh. But exploring human nature. I often tell my friends to just go for it. Build an old school blog and share whatever comes to mind. I did it. Under the guise of humor. It’s easy. What it does is teach you about yourself in a way that you — and now ai — can index. It’s fascinating to observe society’s evolution and with it our own. 

Sometimes HTTF is funny-haha, sometimes it’s funny-she was tying too fast and lost me, and other times it’s funny-interesting 🤔 in a let me think about that more. Hence the tag line at the top of this blog. Things that make us think. 💭 

Mostly for anyone who is reading, take a chance. Be silly. Allow yourself to serve as a friendly and respectful laugh to the people who need it most. 

Your philosophies will need to be updated as a result of seeing how easy life can feel, even when everyone else’s narrative would sound dreadful. Good to consider. 

Friday Coffee ☕️

The line at the coffee shop hadn’t moved in four minutes, which was long enough to notice the man in front of me was reading a battered copy of Middlemarch — the sign of someone who commits to things, I thought. 

“Slow going?” I asked, nodding at the book.

“Third time through,” he said. “I already know how it ends. I just like taking my time getting there.”

“That’s a lot of patience for one book.”

“Patience is kind of my whole personality,” he said. “I once alphabetized my spice rack. For fun. On a Tuesday.”

“Sounds like a very Tuesday thing to do.”

We laughed. 

The line inched forward. He asked what I was reading. I admitted I was between books — “in a bit of a dry spell,” I said, and immediately regretted the phrase. He didn’t laugh, exactly. Just filed it away, the way you’d dog-ear a page.

“You should try something with a strong opening,” he finally said. “I’m very particular. I like to know within the first page whether it’s worth my time.”

“That’s a lot of pressure to put on an opening line.”

“I’ve never had any complaints.”

Cheeky, I thought. 

By now we were close enough to the register that I could hear the barista rattling off syrups — vanilla, caramel, something seasonal and delicious — and he still hadn’t looked at the menu. Not once.

“You haven’t even glanced at the board,” I said.

“I already know what I want.”

Feeling a bit sassy: 

“I like a man who knows what he wants,” I said. “Preferably from the menu. And preferably quickly — the line’s getting long.”

He smiled, turned to the barista. Ordered a plain black coffee, no adjustments, no apologies.

“Uh, that’s a bit boring,” I joked.

“Efficient,” he said. “I save the interesting decisions for later.”

He held the door for me on the way out. Didn’t ask for my number. Just said, “See you Friday” — like he already knew I’d be back same time, same place, same everything.

I hadn’t told him I came here on Fridays.

An Ode To Friendship

 

Inspired by Kahlil Gibran—From The Prophet (1923). 

An Ode to Friendship 

And a young woman said, Speak to us of Friendship.
And she answered, saying:

Your friend is the welcome answer to your heart’s true needs.
She is your garden, sown with love and gathered with gratitude.
She is your table, your hearth, and the warmth beside you.
You come to her with an open heart, and together you enter peace.

When your friend speaks her truth, your own truth rises freely to meet hers.
In her quiet presence, your heart continues its conversation with her heart.
Within friendship, thoughts, desires, and hopes unfold and are shared in luminous joy.

When you journey beyond one another’s presence, love brings her essence into clearer view.
For what you cherish in her appears with new clarity, as the mountain reveals its full beauty from the open plain.

Let friendship deepen the spirit.
For love reveals its own mystery through freedom, generosity, and grace.

Offer your friend the fullness of who you are.
When she knows the rhythm of your tides, let her also know the radiance of your rising waters.
Seek your friend with hours made alive by your presence.
Bring her the time in which both of you may flourish.
For friendship receives your needs and expands the abundance within you.

And in the sweetness of friendship, let there be laughter and pleasures shared.
For in the dew of little things, the heart discovers its morning and is renewed.