Connecting the Dots

Life is a game and you get decide the meaning you make of it

I remember, as a small child, playing a game called “Connect the Dots.”

In front of me was an activities book composed of sheets of paper with nothing on them but numbered dots. My task was a simple one — to draw lines between the dots, connecting each dot sequentially. #1 would get connected to #2. #2 would get connected to #3 and so on until each of the dots were connected, resulting in the creation of some kind of picture — a hat, a house, a boat, or whatever the book publisher had in mind.

I found this fascinating, thrilled that I could make something, that out of nothing something would emerge — something I could recognize, name, and later, talk about.

And while I did not grow up to become an artist, I did develop an interest in the phenomenon of pattern recognition, pattern making, and the various ways in which human beings construct their own reality.

As I got older, it became clear to me that this same children’s game of connecting the dots had played itself out, in human history, in many fascinating ways. What were the constellations, if not bigger kids — the ancient Greeks and Babylonians — connecting non-numbered dots in the night sky — the product of their need to make sense out of what they saw.