Meaning through patterns - we love order

Pattern-making and coincidence-spotting are two harmless, enjoyable and meaningless parts of life, work or play. Or are they meaningless? While not possessed of meaning themselves, they can give meaning to our practices. 

Lucky numbers, for example: our family number is 22, and every time I raise my eyes to look at a sporting match on television, the first player I ever notice is the one in jersey 22. Is this some mysterious force at work, or just my brain is primed for the lucky digits? My daughter chose as her wedding date October 10 last year – 10-10-20. Two numbers become one, with a nod to the Spice Girls. (Setting aside a pandemic and a wedding that nearly fitted in a phone box, it was indeed a lucky and meaningful day.)

Our brains are wired to spot patterns. Perhaps this is why we attribute some higher or greater meaning when small events in everyday life seem to have rhythm or completeness.

 

There is something about regularity, about patterns, symmetry or recurrence, that satisfies us. The golden ratio, or divine proportion, is a concept from mathematics which was incorporated into art or construction from ancient times. It is the proportion (if that’s the word) 1:1.61, and it occurs naturally all over the place, in clouds, in body parts, in plants. Spooky. Nature really whacks us with patterns, should we look. Sitting slack-jawed at a David Attenborough nature documentary, we’ve all seen creatures whose natural raiment, its beauty and precision, elicits the expert comment: “That’s crazy!” How can nature be so perfect? Look at a peacock, the swirling patterns and jewel colours of the bird. All natural.

 

An interesting piece here from the Franklin Institute cites some patterns in nature, such as the spirals in pine cones, pineapples and hurricanes. They just happen that way.

So when we are aiming to create meaning in our lives, we often look for order, a sense of wrapping something up and tying it with a bow. Maybe it is the press release you have to write today, the target number of clients to call, getting all the washing done or finishing the chapter of your novel. If you can just find completion in one day, the sense of unfinished work, the anxiety of leaving things hanging, will not bug you. There will be a sense of achievement, but a module of achievement that fits into a bigger endeavour, your work, your project, your creation.

If you can create a sense of purpose with a pattern in your life, you are creating meaning.

(Photo by Caleb Minear via Unsplash)