Looking for Patterns...

However much anyone may deny it, we are all curious scientists one way or the other. Yes "scientist" not "explorer". That's because here we discuss about the things that are present in front of our eyes, not the ones we go looking for.

Meet Jon (it could be John or Joan, so that gender is not a problem, still here 'he' will be used, hoping readers recognise it as gender-unspecific).

So meet Jon. He is like anyone of us. Had a normal childhood. And like any of us is curious about the things he sees/feels around him.

When Jon was young, very young, he was bewildered by the world. Everything was new to him. Nothing made sense. He had nothing to compare anything with, he did not have anything to draw an analogy from. Even if hypothetically he had some prebirth knowledge, at infancy his brain was not developed enough to handle analogies. So that time he accepted things as it came. First trying to see the 'effect' rather than worrying about the 'cause'.

But as Jon got older, he looked for the explanation of his observations, experiences, facts, science, etc. And then he was told in 'science', everything follows a rule. Everything happens because of a cause and it follows certain rules.

This applied perfectly in mathematics, the pure science, and decreasingly well in physics and chemistry. By the time it came to biology, it started being called 'The Science if Exceptions'.

Jon then realized that 'rules' as such applied only to science. Real life was far too diverse and complicated to apply rules to.

Still... Still he knew he was looking for patterns. And so was everyone around him. So often whenever he heard some new song, his instinct somehow told him that the lyrics will start only after four beats or after three loops of a piece of music. Or when he saw a dance sequence, some steps had to be repeated, it could not be all arbit. Though many artistes have tried all arbit, he knew that very few could get it right, same as with musicians, because else something felt missing, something seemed wrong.

Then again with looks. He noticed that good looking people were generally those with very good symmetry were universally considered good looking. Even a slight deviation looked unsightly.

Then Jon thought about buildings. Most of them were scarily similar. Just squarish or rectangular blocks. In fact the buildings that didn't conform stood out! Still it looked good only if it had certain symmetry. It had to consist of regular shapes, not arbitly shaped parts, to look appealing. For Jon had seen such buildings being looked down upon.

Then Jon realised the biggest example was Nature itself. Although it is said to be the most creative and imaginative and unrepetitive thing... Yet it has symmetry. Whether you look at mammals body structure, bone structure, arrangement on a sunflower, proportion of body parts, distribution of elements in air, water and earth, particles with corresponding antiparticles, most appendages, external characteristics of living creatures being unity or an even number, day and night, hot and cold, and, obviously, good and bad!

This confused Jon. Did symmetry apply to non-scientific principles as well? Did it apply to art? To Nature? To feelings? And to many such things that go beyond science?

Like any of us, he has no answer, and perhaps never will. For maybe the day someone finds an answer to such questions, their will be no mystery in life left. No fun, no retrospect, no philosophy and no spirituality. Because then we will just be a bunch of chemicals with no life!