The same face keeps showing up everywhere

Alright, maybe not the exact same face and maybe not everywhere. But similar enough faces in three different places is enough to make me take notice. Let me explain.

The other day the teller at the bank when I went to deposit the rolled coins had short black hair, a girlish round face, and brown eyes.

Then the next day, the girl at the checkout lane of the grocery store had short black hair, a girlish round face, and brown eyes.

Then the waitress at the restaurant we had dinner in had short black hair, a girlish round face, and brown eyes.

And the thing with their faces is they all looked enough like each other that they could be sisters. I know that ‘girlish round face and brown eyes’ is a fairly generic description, but it fit all three faces. There is plenty of variation in the faces I see each day that ones that look similar stand out to me.

I suppose they could be sisters, all living in the same area and doing jobs that keeps them in the same place every day. They could have different noses, or eyebrows or cheeks, and maybe the three faces I saw had some variations but they were more similar than not. They were all different from the nurse at the doctor’s office, or the actress on the wife’s current favorite TV show, or the clerk at the pet supply store, who all had short black hair, roundish faces and brown eyes.

It could be a ‘frequency illusion’, a cognitive bias that finds similar patterns showing up once you are aware of it. Like, you buy a red car, and suddenly you are seeing red cars everywhere you go.

The ‘law of attraction’ folks present this as ‘proof’ that it works. The true believer will tell you to visualize something out of the ordinary, like a blue peacock further. And if you believe hard enough, you will magically start seeing blue peacock feathers everywhere.

As you go about your day, you start seeing blue peacock feathers everywhere. It’s not that they weren’t there before. They weren’t created because you just started looking for them. You just weren’t busy looking for them because you had your mind on other things. Now that you’re ‘primed’ and looking for them, you start seeing them. No magic involved.

Anyway, I’ve started seeing very similar faces enough to notice that it is happening. I wonder if it will keep happening. I suppose it will for a while at least, because I’ll be looking for more similar faces to see if it keeps happening.

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