Creating patterns for comfort

Patterns make us believe we can tell the future and release us from the burden of uncertainty

What’s Up?

Do we find answers, or do we make them?

Humans have an incredible power to find patterns in things, even when there is no pattern. We see Jesus on a piece of toast, our deceased mom in a crowd of strangers, or a system to the symbols scrolling past on a slot machine.

Ten summers ago, during one of our annual lengthy beach stays, I found my daughter E standing at the edge of the ocean. She was five and stood with her arms up as if directing an invisible symphony in the tide.

The three or four days before this, we couldn’t coach our precocious fiver-year-old anywhere near the water. Her cousin told her stories about all the children swiped off the Oregon coast by sneaker waves, only to drown in the great Pacific crossing and have their lifeless bodies wash up onshore in China.

She proclaimed with a toothy grin that she wasn’t afraid of the water anymore because she had figured out how to control the ocean. With a flick of her wrist and the subtle shifting of her feet, she demonstrated how she could stop the water from touching her. The incoming tide stopped just short of us and receded back from whence it came. She beamed at the successful demonstration of her power.

We find patterns, or perhaps we make patterns because patterns mean certainty. Patterns make us believe we can tell the future and release us from the burden of uncertainty.

The sights and sounds of ocean waves have always brought me comfort. And while careful observation shows that there is no consistency to the tides, I find comfort in the inexorable pattern of curl, crash, and recede.

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Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,

Jason