Patterns and Pathos

In late October 2008, my 16-year-old cat, Sara, lost the use of her hind legs. I brought her to the vet's, left her there for observation, and came home. It was a particularly gloomy day, even for late autumn, with a sky like a cataracted eye. As I stood in the living room in a daze, wondering what would happen with her (there was a slim chance she would recover), I heard a raptor cry outside. I looked out, thinking I might see a Peregrine Falcon (as I'd seen elsewhere in the city). A smaller bird landed on a wire, upright like a raptor, not a songbird. Luckily, I had my binos. It was an American Kestrel (pictured)! Given the rarity of a bird of prey in the city, and the nature of the day, I found my innate sense of superstition kick in. I saw the bird as an augury of death. (Sure enough, Sara had to be euthanized.)
Two weeks ago, just as Pablo started to act a little quieter than usual, I heard that screech again, same window. I went out and saw a kestrel chasing a pigeon (that was about its own size - talk about eyes bigger than your stomach!). Oh no, I thought, what happened last time I saw a kestrel fly overhead?! That was pattern recognition of the worst sort.
If that were not strange enough, as my husband and I returned home from a walk on Saturday, mere hours after saying good-bye to Pablo, a kestrel cried out as it flew across the street from our apt.
It is a very useful adaptation to see patterns amidst the chaos of information that pours into our senses every moment, and from the myriad events and phenomena out there. The trait is so finely tuned, it tends to look for patterns even when coincidence better explains what's going on. I suppose culture, personal experience, and wisdom (which may never come!) help us separate true patterns from false ones - and prevent us from hanging people for the latter.
In my case, it is a combination of birdwatching awe and an overdeveloped sense of narrative, for the want of a better term, that led me to frame these phenomena. When we are in the grips of a strong emotion - grief, love, anger - the tendency is greater. It pays to keep perspective.

Patterns - Real and Imagined

When seemingly related but random events start to overlap in time, it's easy to believe "something's going on here - maybe it's worth looking into." The human mind has a built-in pattern-detecting mechanism, for the want of a technical term, and it gets us into probably as much trouble as it keeps us out of.
I doubt my recent foray into "superstition" is anything but completely harmless - except for the fact that it is evidence that I do not think rationally all the time (when it's necessary to think rationally, I hasten to add). I'm referring to multiple appearances of John Cacioppo and his work on loneliness. First the webcast, then the coverage this week by the Globe and Mail, and today - even a bit weirder - a small review of his book Loneliness in the April 2008 SEED magazine I just happened to flip through!
What are the odds? we ask, wanting to see a pattern, a semblance of order in this most disordered world. But it is nothing more than coincidence, a cluster of events that resemble each other. We need connection so much, we see it almost everywhere. It's like seeing bunny shapes in the clouds, instead of just puffs of white.
It is, as I say, harmless to attribute causation in my case - thinking that all these mentions of Cacioppo and his work are "trying to tell me something" - but the "de-randoming" of random events will frequently defy reason, and often have nothing to do with intuition, either. It is false causality - potentially dangerous when applied to morality. Witches were burned at the stake for less than a couple of reported cause-and-effect "facts."
The worst that will probably happen to me is that I will buy his book, read it instead of something else in my to-read pile, and end up writing an essay on the same subject. Okay, maybe not so harmless! Time and energy are precious!