The Power of Three

In story-telling

Photo by Brigitta Schneiter on Unsplash

In writing for children, the usefulness of ‘thinking in threes’ might be more obvious. The Three Little Pigs, Three Billy-Goats Gruff, the three bears in Goldilocks… For older readers, The Three Musketeers. Recall how the Hardy Boys—a twosome—had their pal, Chet, and Nancy Drew had her two side-kicks, George and Bess. Three and three. “Three” doesn’t have to stop with story-telling for the young, though.

The Golden Mean or Ratio is all about “thirds” (over-simplification from a non-mathematical person, but…) Visual artists/photographers work with this, knowing it is aesthetically pleasing. But that ratio goes beyond our surfaces. We have a gravitational pull to the nature of three.

“Three” is the first significant pattern we encounter when we learn numbers as children: one can be multiplied many times over, but is always one. With two, opposites come into being—binaries. But three introduces a quality that responds to the opposites—is it reconciliation? diversion? balance? Story is born.