Have you ever been engaged in the task of seeking out and purchasing a new vehicle, when, seemingly overnight, the particular make, model, and color of the vehicle you have taken a shine to begins showing up everywhere and anywhere you happen to be? “It must be a sign. The chartreuse microbus, that C.W. McCall sang about, was meant to be mine.”

Yes, it is a sign, a sign that you are a fairly normal human, in possession of a fairly normal human brain. A brain that likes to subconsciously seek out things we have a conscious interest in, and then kindly inform us each time that thing makes an appearance somewhere in our sensory orbit. “There it is. See it? There it is. Hear it? There it is. There it is….” And so forth and so on…and on…and on.

Being a fairly normal human, in possession of a fairly normal human brain, I was curious why these “signs” kept magically appearing? A quick trip to the Googlesphere informed my brain that the seemingly newfound prevalence of chartreuse microbuses in my world was a result of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon…and C.W. McCall.

Professor Arnold Zwicky referred to this phenomenon as the “frequency illusion” and said, “A couple of things happen when the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon kicks in. One, your brain seems to be excited by the fact that you’ve learned something new, and selective attention occurs. So now that you’re looking for it, you find it. To make it all the more powerful, confirmation bias occurs after seeing it once or twice, and you start agreeing with yourself that, yes, you’re definitely seeing it more.”

“You’re looking for it, you find it.” If you’ve ever moved, and had the pleasure of somewhat strategically, and somewhat carefully, stuffing your stuff into the back of a U-Haul, you probably experienced the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and started noticing U-Hauls everywhere.

I’ve had the pleasure a time or two, and as a result, U-Hauls are on my radar, and when that subconscious radar “blips” with a sighting, my fairly normal human consciousness begins to ponder.

Where are they going? Where are they coming from? Why are they moving? Did they want to move? Did they have to move? How much stuff is in the back of that truck? Did they do a good job of utilizing the space to its fullest potential? What’s the heaviest thing? How many things will be in more pieces when they are unpacked than when they were packed? How many lamps do they have?

At the end of all that pondering, my hope for those that possess the stuff stuffed into “Mom’s Attic” and beyond, is that they find what they are looking for wherever it is they are headed. Find what they are looking for. Find what they want. But mostly, find what they need.

Often, we may not really know what it is that we need, but it has a way of finding us. So it goes.