OK, so head’s up, this is by far the weirdest post I’ve ever made. After I had done the breakfast dishes and a few random items I’d found floating around downstairs (kids!), I went to let the plug out of the kitchen sink. I wasn’t in a good mood or a bad mood, if anything I was feeling neutral; one task down, plenty more to go.
As I reached for the plug – there it was – a super excited happy-face!
Of course, it wasn’t anything remotely human – just a few spaces in amongst the bubbles and floating food. YUK, should have been my response, but it wasn’t. The happy face made me happy. Really happy. So happy I just had to take a photo and write about how happy I was.
Seeing human faces in inanimate objects is called “face pareidolia” and it’s apparently the result of hardwiring in our brain – we’re primed to see faces and identify others as friend or foe based on their expression. In the blink of an eye, unbeknown to your consciousness, your subconscious screams “happy face – good to approach!”
Setting aside the science of it all, I love that our brains (even temperamental, glitchy old migraine-brains) can find happiness in places as otherwise irrelevant as dirty dishwater. Thank you brain – thanks for making my day with your bubbly enthusiasm!
Take care everyone and stay bubbly, Linda x
PS – Because I can’t help myself, I’ve just got to ask… which way does the water spiral down your drain when you let the plug out? When I was a kid, they always said it depended on which hemisphere you lived in, but now they think that this gravitational pull is too small and it has more to do with micro-tensions in the surface of individual sinks and pipes… yeah, yeah, but… The water in my kitchen sink in Sydney, Australia (this morning) spiraled CLOCKWISE down the drain. How about you? Even if you write in anonymously, I’d love to know what country you live in and which way your happy-go-lucky dishwater spins into the void!
The Mindful Migraine 
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