Evolution sometimes has an interesting sense of humor. We have evolved to be good at pattern recognition. It’s important to be able to pick out that tiger lurking in the underbrush or that poisonous snake amongst the leaves. And it’s always a good idea to be able to tell your friends apart from your enemies. This is the stuff of survival.
But in this modern age, we may just be too good at pattern recognition. We see the Virgin Mary in grilled cheese sandwiches. We see conspiracies where none exist. Our prejudices about people’s appearances prevent us from feeling safe and often promote unnecessary violence and war. We’re frequently so intent upon describing criminals to the police that we don’t even come close to being accurate. These days, more often than not, pattern recognition bites us in the butt.
But it is nice to be able to look up at the clouds in the sky and see horses and angels and butterflies. Imagination has “image” in it for a reason. It’s fun to pick out constellations, read palms, and create intricate tattoos. Without pattern recognition, we could never play Candy Crush Saga.
In recent weeks, pattern recognition has been both a blessing and a curse to me. I keep seeing old red Ford F150’s everywhere I go. And I see older men with long hair and beards and baseball caps and sunglasses. All of these things make me hope, for a split second, that my boyfriend isn’t dead after all. My heart leaps. And then drops back down into its state of heartbreak when I realize I’m once again mistaken. How many times will I have to fall for that trick?
But on the brighter side, there’s this tree outside my bathroom window. When the wind isn’t blowing, the branches look exactly like the profile of my boyfriend. I never noticed that before, but now it’s all I see, and it makes me smile. I’ll be really sad when a branch breaks or the tree grows in such a way that the image disappears. But maybe by then I won’t need to see it anymore.
[Image credit: imgarcade.com]
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