Deep Life Reflections: Friday Five
Issue 145 - Three
Welcome to Issue 145 of Deep Life Reflections.
During Christmas, I like to play a game with my niece: Name Three Things. Three things made of metal. Three things that can fly. Three things that start with the letter Y.
Or I might ask a friend to name their favourite three Vietnam films. Or their favourite three Neil Young songs.
I like the number three. So does my brain. So does yours.
When things exist in threes, they are easier to understand, process, and remember. Just like that last sentence.
This isn’t accidental. Three is the minimum number of data points we need to recognise a pattern. Two aren’t sufficient. Two points will always lie on a straight line. They can be connected but they don’t tell us much. The third point changes everything. It introduces depth, variation, and meaning. It allows a pattern to become visible. To exist.
This is why three matters.
It’s also why the brain gravitates towards it. Humans are good at recognising patterns, but we can only hold so much information at once. Three keeps us from being overwhelmed while giving us the illusion of choice.
This idea is often referred to as The Rule of Three. It appears everywhere—language, storytelling, art, culture, photography, persuasion. Three works. As De La Soul put it in 1989: Three is the magic number.
The idea goes back much further than East Coast hip-hop. The ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras believed numbers carried deep meaning, far beyond their face value. For him, three was the perfect number; the number of harmony, wisdom, and understanding.
Three was the number of time: past, present, and future. It was the number of existence: birth, life, and death. And it was the number of stories: beginning, middle, and end.
From a young age, we are conditioned to see the world in threes.
Fairy tales are full of threes. The Three Little Pigs. Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In Cinderella, she goes to the ball three times before losing her shoe. That third moment is decisive. It becomes the trigger for something important to happen. Change.
This change tends to happen in one of three ways.
It can be cumulative, as with Cinderella. Each visit to the ball builds on the last until the transformation becomes unavoidable.
It can be contrasting, as with The Three Little Pigs. The first two houses fail to protect them from the wolf. Only the third house stands up. Meaning is revealed through comparison: straw, sticks, and bricks.
And it can be dialectical, as with Goldilocks and her bowls of porridge. The first is wrong one way. The second is wrong in the opposite way, and the third is “just right.” It resolves the tension of the previous two.
This structure doesn’t disappear when we grow up. The Rule of Three still underpins modern storytelling: the gradual resolution of a process that leads to transformation.
Take Die Hard. Whatever side of the “Is it a Christmas film?” debate you fall on, its structure is clean. Two central characters—John McClane and Hans Gruber—begin from opposite positions. One starts strong and falls. The other starts weak and rises. Their interaction creates the third element: transformation. McClane survives, and also wins his wife back. Gruber loses everything.
The same dynamic appears repeatedly. Light and dark require a relationship between them to mean anything. Order and chaos only make sense in contrast. Life and death are defined by the tension they share.
It’s this third element that’s critical. With two elements, we only have two points of information. We can only compare. But with a third, we can interpret.
That third component helps us understand not only what something is, but what it means in relation to something else. It reveals limitations, trade-offs, and possibilities that aren’t visible with fewer parts. This is why the third person in a group matters so much. Why the third vote breaks a tie. Why a third perspective can change the texture of a problem.
It’s also why Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol endures. I watched the 1984 George C. Scott version on Christmas Eve. Yes, there are three ghosts—past, present, and future—but the power of the story is the interaction between those perspectives and what it creates. Scrooge doesn’t change because he’s frightened or nostalgic. He changes because he can finally see himself across time. Context creates a realisation of the error of his ways. Realisation creates learning. Learning produces transformation.
The Rule of Three allows us to break down complexity into something we can live with. It helps us contextualise and interpret the relationships, decisions, and patterns that would otherwise feel overwhelming. It gives structure to chaos, even though we know chaos is still all around us. And always will be.
We use this pattern more often than we realise. Sometimes consciously. Other times instinctively. It’s one of the ways the brain helps us make sense of the sheer volume of information, choices, challenges, threats, and opportunities we face every day.
And sometimes, it’s just a game. Like with my niece.
Name three films you love to watch at Christmas.
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