Yesterday, someone started talking about the interesting yet subtle use of threes in our daily lives. The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize how much we put the idea of threes to use in normal conversations. In the past I’ve read about the significance of threes in the ancient world. The Egyptian’s use of threes was widespread in their religion as well as their culture. The triangle was held sacred and used often in their buildings along with the artwork they created. The legacy of threes was passed on to the Greeks, the Romans and on into our modern world. We find it in religion, art, architecture, and literature.
Just think about how much the idea of threes is used. In Christianity we have the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In building, especially the arts and crafts designs, we have balance, order, and geometric precision as well as the use of triglyphs in the classical designs. Remember some of the old sayings like: death comes in threes, two’s company and three’s a crowd, three sheets to the wind, the three bears, three bags full, three blind mice, three stooges, three monkeys, three little pigs, and the list goes on. Then we have the trimesters,the three unities, three graces, three stages of life, three wishes, the third eye, the three Rs, the three laws of motion, three dimensions, and as well the list continues.
It would be a good exercise for the brain to attempt find all of the relationships of threes in our daily lives. Be sure to write them down as I’m sure if you work at it, the list will be long and most certainly you’ll be surprised how much threes manifest themselves in all aspects of the world we know. You may even have enough to create a book of threes.
