“Think back to your childhood. From time to time, you probably amused yourself with a connect-the-dots puzzle. Do you remember the sense of accomplishment that you had when the finished drawing actually looked like something, when the edges were relatively smooth and the picture looked complete? Do you remember how you could amaze yourself when you use to play connect-the-dots? When you began to sketch lines on the page, you had no idea what you were even drawing but you worked carefully and meticulously. You deliberately placed each mark, and before you knew it, the lines began to form a picture. To your amazement, every small line fit into the overall image. They were not simply disjointed lines between numbered dots. They formed a larger picture and made you feel like a real artist. You felt like you could draw anything as long as there were dots to connect.

As adults, we don’t sit around playing connect-the-dots anymore. Why? Perhaps it is because we have long since mastered the skills of the game, and it no longer poses a challenge for us. It lost its challenge when we became able to guess the unrevealed picture without even picking up a pencil. It didn’t take you long before you could just glance at the page and connect the dots in your mind. You could surmise the image from other clues on the page. Physically connecting the dots was no longer amusing or necessary when you were able to mentally connect the dots.

When coupled with imagination, the human mind is a powerful tool. We have a marvelous propensity for “connecting the dots.” Our minds want to make sense out of the world, to create order where order is not apparent. How many times have you written a sentence and been completely oblivious to your own typos because your mind saw only what you intended rather than what you actually typed? This phenomenon affects most of us because we intuitively want to fill in the blanks and supply missing information. We mentally interpret and even edit situations and events around us to conform to our preferred image of the world. We see the world through the rose-colored glasses of our own choosing. When we are confronted with an incomplete story or riddle in life, we fill in the blanks or connect the dots from our own imaginations.”

Moments of Forever, pages  85-86.

Blog to continue at http://momentsofforever.wordpress.com