When you were younger there must have been days  when the best thing was just to lie in the grass, look at the clouds forming, and notice the one that looked like  a sheep, and the could that looked like a car. Or maybe you have had days when were driving to work, and noticed something about the traffic and said to yourself:’ There is going to be a bad traffic jam today.’ From that instant assessment, you took a different route. You heard later on that a big traffic jam did occur. This can only happen because your brain is designed to recognize patterns. It gives you an evolutionary advantage. If you’re out walking on the grasslands of Africa, and you catch a whiff of  a certain scent, and hear a particular kind of rustle in the grass, being able to put those things together quickly means that you probably get to have dinner and then live long enough to have babies. If you don’t recognize a pattern in time, you end up as baby food. Baby lions’ food, that is.

Every minute of every day your brain is taking in information, and scanning it for patterns. It priorities, identifies, and highlights the important ones, then bring these into conscious awareness. Your brain is just like a ‘pattern recognizing machine’. In order just to live a normal life your brain is constantly recognizing and evaluating patterns and , if there is no pattern, we make something up.

Sometimes, I seem to have the sixth sensation. I can’t even say the reason for   a certain decision that I just know it will be nice. 6 years ago, or thereabouts, I wanted to buy a apartment of a building in suburbs, which my husband didn’t want to buy.Even though the block of that area was not satisfying at the time, and the amount of money to buy it was the highest in the city,  I still decided  to buy it. From my perspective, I believed that this place would developed well in the future, and that would not take me too long. Now my husband is quite happy to have this apartment to live, because the rate of  it has risen to more  4 times than when I got it. Maybe I recognized certain pattern at that time, and my brain formed certain conscious awareness. It’s like a certain instinct.

In my daily life, I could always sense some patterns. And I know my mum is able to do so, too. In her words, it’s like something subconscious, because of her decades of years of  experiences. When we confronted something, she knew how to do what to do, but didn’t understand why, and at the end of the thing it was always proven that she had been correct.

Our brains seem to react automatically all the things we meet for patterns, which makes us human. And it’s what makes language learning that much easier when you recognize and use patterns consciously.