Turning mountains back into molehills

The City of Opportunity is the city of Tommy Douglas. Aside from the father of universal health care, he is also the father of Shirley Douglas.
A famous actress and activist in her own right, she also bore Hollywood's infamous Kiefer Sutherland.
So there you have it. Jack Bauer and Weyburn are intimately interconnected - from a rural Canadian prairie city to an international film star.
Starring alongside Kiefer in such '90s epics as Flatliners and A Few Good Men was Kevin Bacon. Aside from giving the world such other films as Footloose and Hollow Man, he also inspired that great game that bears his name - the Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
During my South Korea days, on many a subway ride and bus stop wait with my friend Ivan Holubetz, we passed connecting obscure actors through the Kevin Bacon game.
This was my train of thought as I drove through Weyburn last weekend on my trek to Minot. I had one of those goofy moments of mock-clarity, where one thinks he's on the brink of some profound realization, but really is just trying to fill boredom with nincompoopery.
As I continued towards the border, I contemplated the similarities between Ivan and my Estevan friend Brad Brown (the very person with whom I would travel to Minot). While Brad and I were heading to the U.S., his wife Tracy had plans to attend a candle party - in Weyburn.
And so my thought train came full circle.
It's a very strange human characteristic - looking for patterns.
I'm sure this valuable evolutionary trait once allowed us to analyze broad landscapes, predicting where foods would likely be, while at the same time allowing us to spot hiding predators.
However, as civilized animals, this natural trait is sort of a nuisance. We can't turn it off.
You know that strange experience when you're staring up into a stucco ceiling and an image appears among the random bumps and swirls? After a few seconds of looking in another direction, the image typically disappears. It seems like such a waste of brain space.
It can be quite unsettling as well. As long as I can remember, I've been terrified of the dark. It seems when the lights are out, all the shadows and subtle furnace noises (chaotic as they might be) come together in such a manner that I see and hear Satan maniacally playing the piano next to the closet.
As distressing as such fear might be, in some prehistoric nighttime jungle, seeing everything as a potential hazard probably allowed people to survive when a real danger came slithering along. The drive to seek out patterns is probably as strong in humans as our instincts to reproduce or hold our breath underwater.
Maybe that's why, living in our current luxurious and non-hunter/gatherer artificial reality, we constantly strive to see meaning in the universe. Without a need to fear predators and with food as difficult to locate as one's local Co-op, our constantly running internal pattern machines turn to more idol concepts. We direct our powerful perceptions at the stars, the abilities of our own minds and existence itself.
Is this the nature of God? Is She simply the end product of constant seeking? Maybe that's why every culture seems to create religions. It makes sense that if we are constantly attempting to find meaning in the Universe, we're going to assume there is meaning to be found.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I've always found it rather difficult to hold onto one all-encompassing idea. It's probably the result of my inability to stop seeking patterns that I continue looking for the meaning of life after I thought I found it.
It's like the image in the stucco - after a few seconds it fades away and one is looking for a new image.
Quite frankly, any meaning we do come up with is too unstable to ever be taken too seriously. Really, as with my mental wonderings while driving to Minot, we're all just intelligent apes filling the boredom with nincompoopery.
I suppose we need to learn to enjoy the process, because it's inevitable.

Carter Haydu can be reached at 691-1265.