Birds do it. Bees do it. Secretaries of State hearing UN pleas do it. Yesterday, a photographer caught Hillary Clinton aimlessly drawing on her speech notes during a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East peace process. The situation is grim, shooting, suffering etc., but all of that starts to run together after awhile. Let's get to the more interesting water cooler conversation-y stuff that doesn't bum everyone out: what do Hillary Clinton's doodles tell us about her personality?
As breathlessly reported by The Daily Mail (which helpfully included an unflattering picture of Hillary Clinton's face contorting mid-wink with their coverage, you know, for added clarity), Clinton appeared to space out during remarks given by other diplomats, drawing an organized series of interlocking circles and a star on a copy of her prepared speech.
The Mail also hinted that doodles can prove a window into a person's subconscious, since they're made when a person is not fully mentally present in the moment. Intrigued, we did a little digging and found that indeed doodles can be fodder for quizzes in magazines that ask what (INSERT INANE THING) says about Y-O-U (my dishwashing style shows that I hate washing dishes and never do it, for example).
Clinton's geometric doodles, it seems, show that she has an "organized and efficient mind," according to this random About.com guide to sketch interpretation. The star means that Hillary Clinton is ambitious, with "a desire for self-promotion." Which is pretty expected from a politician. However, the meaning of her use of circles is more esoteric:
The circle appears in every culture as an archetypal form representative of the eternal whole. With no ending or beginning, it revolves in an eternal cycle and is linked to the sun-disk and the attendant concepts of the yearly cycle, the moon, and the wheel. In some symbol systems it also represents the universe.
Ho-ly shit. Sun-disk? Universe? Hillary Clinton is basically a wisdom priestess, according to her aimless drawing.
Doodle interpretation! It's one part dream interpretation, one part astrology, 100% pseudoscience fun!