Not all dots are meant to be connected

Quick exercise: What is the connection between the following: Glee (TV Show), global warming and a typewriter. Yes, there is an answer to this.

By now, you would have probably come close or even come up with your own outrageous idea to fulfill the exercise above. In reality, the answer is simply none.

Social psychologists call it illusory correlation. We tend to conceive a relation when there is none. How can you make of something when there is none, right?

Remember the good old “singing with a terrible voice made the rain fall hard” or the “I’m wearing my lucky shirt that’s why I passed the exam” thoughts? You know they aren’t really that logical or even true yet we tend to believe and go by them. Yeah, I know you’re probably guilty of it in your own little way.

But don’t bang your head over this little trick. Our minds have been trained early on to make sense of things. With our training in math and logic, we’ve always been asked to see how things are related or how one falls into place in the greater scheme of things. The connect-the-dots game which may be mere toddler’s play is a classic ploy of the assuming mind. Connecting the dots and in the process, making something out of supposedly randomly scattered dots, trains our young minds to deduce relationships.

When taking exams, don’t you find it hard to encircle the multiple choice none of the above as well? We are more inclined to think and force a relationship rather than accept that there is really none. None of the above doesn’t always seem logical for answers right?

In this training of analyzing and inferring relationships, it has rubbed off in perceiving even the most minute of details in our own daily encounters. Remember those messages or even one-liners you’d gush over because you think it meant a lot only to find out it didn’t mean a thing? And your life seems as scattered as those dots you’d played with when you were young?

That’s why some people end up in the worst of situations, they connect the dots too much.

Sometimes, dots are just dots. Not meant to be connected but to be left alone and admired for what they are. Relationship-less.

Some things are meant to happen for no reason at all. They just happened period. We shouldn’t waste our time trying to figure out or fit it in our lives because we might miss out on other dots which are definitely meant to be connected.