The Ceiling Flower Problem

Last week I was at my doctor's office (routine visit, nothing dramatic) and I'd already been there close to an hour. I'd read 20+ chapters of my book, scrolled through my phone several times, stood up to stretch at least twice. At some point I just started staring at the walls the way you do when you've run out of things to do with your eyes.

Suddenly, I heard a small flapping noise. I followed the subtle noise with my eyes and if you allow your eyes to travel towards the top of the picture, you’ll see it too:

A small decorative decal, right on the ceiling above the exam table. It appears to be the kind of thing someone chose deliberately, probably after a conversation about patient experience and making the space feel less clinical.

I'm also a doctor, so I get it. I know exactly why the exam table is designed the way it is - these tables are designed for ease of sterilization and positioning for various physical exams. And my guess would be that the little decal was meant to ease the discomfort or distract, just a little.

If you’ve ever been through a physical exam that requires that kind of positioning, you already know how unrealistic that is.

It's not that the intention was wrong. It's that the intention and the actual problem were living in completely different time zones.

It’s a pattern that shows up in various areas of our lives.

The new planner, when what we actually needed was to stop saying yes to things we resented. The brand refresh we threw ourselves into when the real question we were avoiding was whether we still wanted to be doing this at all. The way we reorganize and add storage instead of getting rid of things. The way we find generous explanations for why someone's behavior is understandable, which lets us avoid telling them directly that it isn't working for us.

These aren't completely useless strategies. Some of them are even appropriate in the short term. A new planner can genuinely help for a season. A rebrand can be exactly the right move. The problem isn't the thing itself, it's whether we actually know which one it is when we’re reaching for it.

If I'm honest, I think we usually do know. Not in a way we may say out loud at the time. But somewhere underneath the productivity of it, there's a quieter awareness that we’re decorating the ceiling instead of dealing with what's on the table.

There's a concept in medicine on treating the symptom versus treating the cause. You can manage symptoms for a long time and feel like you're doing something, because technically you are. The pain is less. The numbers look better. But the underlying thing keeps doing what it was doing, and at some point symptom management stops being a bridge and starts being the whole plan.

Which, again, is sometimes fine. I'm not making an argument for tearing everything down all the time. But there's a difference between that and the very specific feeling of doing something useful-looking while quietly knowing it isn't touching the thing that actually needs your attention.

That difference is worth paying attention to, because the useful-looking things have a way of accumulating. You end up with a very well-organized life built around a problem you never addressed, and at some point the organization itself becomes the thing that makes it hard to see clearly.

I'm not writing this because I've figured out the clean solution. I haven't. I still buy the planner sometimes. I still find myself deep in a Google Drive reorganization at 10pm when I should be sleeping, or having the easier version of a conversation instead of the real one.

But I've started asking myself a different question when I reach for the easier fix: do I know what I'm actually reaching for right now? Not to talk myself out of it necessarily - sometimes the answer is yes, and I'm going to do it anyway because I need a win today and that's honest. That's different from the version where I don't ask at all.

The flower on the ceiling isn't the problem. The problem is when we start believing it's enough.

Find Your Voice. Own Your Brand. Create Your Happiness.