Do You Believe in Coincidence?
by
co·in·ci·dence 
(koh-in-si-duh ns) –noun
sɪ| 1. | a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance. |
| 2. | the condition or fact of coinciding. |
| 3. | an instance of this. |
syn·chro·nic·i·ty (sĭng’krə-nĭs’ĭ-tē, sĭn’-) -noun
1. The state or fact of being synchronous or simultaneous;
synchronism.
2. Coincidence of events that seem to be meaningfully related,
conceived in Jungian theory as an explanatory principle on the
same order as causality.
* * * * *
I was watching a murder mystery show the other day and one of the detectives said about clues, “I don’t believe in coincidence.” And that got me thinking. Do I, really, believe in coincidence? In synchronicity?
This past Monday and Tuesday, I posted about a senior partner that died over five years ago. He isn’t mentioned much at my firm these days. Wednesday, while at the office, one of the attorneys I work with brought him up—he’d gotten a piece of mail addressed to the deceased partner on Tuesday.
Or the day of the deceased partner’s funeral, when I was stuck recalling to the IRS how I had calculated this crazy tax loss deduction for a client and after eight hours of not recalling it or being able to get my math to work, I asked the deceased partner to give me the answer and within minutes the answer came.
Or post-Katrina when I needed a new OB/GYN (mine fled to Atlanta never to return) and I found myself in my favorite knitting store and was introduced to Dr. Socks, an OB/GYN. I saw this as a sign. I became a patient of Dr. Socks, and it was the biggest mistake of my life. Or was it? He misdiagnosed me (or the radiologist did and my doc didn’t actually look at the films himself to realize the radiologist was wrong) and sent me down a spiral I wish I never see the depths of again. But that led me to the fertility specialist that gave me Sun.
Or the first date I had with Captain Sarcastic. He saw Hunter Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” on my bookcase and asked me to marry him. I said no. Two years later he’d ask again and I’d say yes.
As a student of law, you learn to look for the “but for” in strings of events. As a genealogist, you look for things to ring a bell: a name on a gravestone, a date on a ship’s log. As someone who is logical and methodical, I tend to look for threads. But, to be honest, as I get older I tend not to give meaning to coincidences. I tend to be of the persuasion that if you look for some “deeper meaning,” some “sign,” you’ll usually think you see it. But that doesn’t give things independent meaning. Sometimes two roads intersecting are just two roads intersecting and not a sign to take a turn.
And I also think that believing in synchronicity discounts a person’s ability to discern. Like that dead partner giving me the answer? A miracle? Or just me finally giving my mind a rest from the stresses of that crazy week for me to refocus and see things clearly? Or my journey with getting to the fertility doctor? I’d already been referred to that doctor and even been to his office but I hadn’t been ready to accept that I had an “infertility problem.” By the time I had dealt with the aftermath of Katrina and the debacle of Dr. Socks, I was in a different mental and emotional state. I was ready to be rational and seek help for a physical problem. CS asking me to marry him on our first date? Frankly, it creeped me out and made me think he was a bit desperate. But I liked that he at least liked HST and I kept an open mind about him.
What do you feel? Do you believe in coincidence or synchronicity? If so, what’s the coincidence that convinced you they have meaning? If not, why not?
i believe that sometimes things happen for a reason…so, i guess i believe in coincidences, too. those tend to freak me out a little.
cool idea for a meme!!
xoxo
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Mike Harmon
No. I don’t. At all.
I also don’t believe that ‘everything happens for a reason’.
Yes and No.
I know, how very helpful.
And, ummm, no, I can’t clarify because I just don’t know how to explain more than that….
Lattice O’ Coincidence
From Repo Man
“A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconciousness.”
It’s so funny that you bring this up because I obsess over whether or not the fate/God/what-have-you is sending me signs or it’s just me desperately seeking validation for the actions I’m thinking of taking. Then someone just told me, “Shit happens” and that changed my view, but I still stop for a moment when these little things happen, like the planets aligned. I guess we’ll never understand it, but I think you gotta take it from what it is: if you want to see it as a sign, do it! More than not, it’s made me feel better.
It happens with me a lot. I decided to finally get my ass out of STL and do something w/ my life and bam, I get a new job offer (still leaving though!). The guy who found me had left a company he help start years ago; that same company was the company I first interviewed at after college (he had left by then) and I turned them down. So in this case, I saw it as a sign.
There have been many co-incidences, meaningful encounters, in my life. Eventually, I began to believe that there are mysteries beyond my comprehension. I don’t try to figure such encoutners out, just open my mind to new possibilities. I think I once wrote about how I met one of my best friends thirty years ago. It took three years, the distance of two continents, and five different people from three different cities pointing me in her direction, before I stopped resisted meeting her. Since then, we have been best of friends.
Does deja vu count as coincidence? I have that feeling a lot and seem to be able to match up feelings with previous happenings or dreams. Okay, that’s just getting weird. Yes, I believe in coincidence.
I can’t get past the pregnant after sleeping with a lesbian thing.
I think I need to read some older posts….
Dr. Socks!!! I do wish you’d give the whole story about that because it is truly HILARIOUS. And um, the lesbian thing? I’m actually not sure that I want to know, except that I do. In a really weird way.
I’m cracking up of the Lesbian/pregnant one. I was with you until that one. LOL
I do believe in coincidence. but I also believe that sometimes things happen for a reason.
Great post!
oh shit girl. this is a post I have been meaning to write for a long time but it will be long and require lots of thought. I will try. but not tonight. Maybe tommorrow.
Okay, I was completely distracted once I got to the sleeping with a lesbian thing. I think I do believe in coincidences, and things happening for a reason. I try not to over analyze it though like I used to. Like some of your other commenters, I try to keep my mind and myself open to all possibilities. Great post
[...] coming together of events in a fated occurance? NOLA Notes raised that question in her post “Do you believe in coincidence?” She asks if we do believe our life events happen for a reason, what convinced us there was [...]
[...] Comments « Do You Believe in Coincidence? [...]
I firmly believe there is no such thing as coincidence! Once you start to become more and more aware of events in your life you would have thought were coincidental, it is really amazing! Good luck in your journey!
I believe everything happens for a reason.. I really enjoyed this post.. right down to you second guessing yourself on the fate part.. THough I cheated and read the lesbian post first..LOL
I Mister Linky’d for you. Because I heart you and stuff, yo.
Oh, you’ve hit on a favorite musing topic of mine. I’ll write. You may regret it. Calling me pedantic and overly literal is an acceptable response.
i have coincidences happening to me almost every day of my life! its really freaky. Like the other day i was singing a song that i haven’t heard in ages and i put on the television and there it was people were singing that same song as soon as i turned the TV on! its quite scary!
It’s a funny coincidence I came across your page. Coincidences happen, and are not necessarily non-causal. Coincidences do not require you to believe in them in order to exist, nor does your disbelief in them somehow mean they don’t exist. Coincidence simply means two things happening at the same time, and one does not cause the other (or vice versa). Unlike the dictionary definition, they do not have to be surprising, miraculous or striking.
Human beings are susceptible to a very basic flaw in their thinking and observations. Once we expect to find something, it’s easy for us to fool ourselves into “finding” it wherever we look. So if we look for a reason why a certain coincidence happened, we could come up with all sorts of reasons. We could even say “Well, there must be some reason, I just don’t know yet.”
Sometimes people do act on coincidences and sometimes get results that are favourable to them. This also brings to light another basic flaw in human beings, the confirmation bias. It means we tend to remember the things that positively appeal to us, and forget things that don’t. If out of hundred coincidences that a person observed, let’s say five of them has some kind of special appeal to the person (like being led to form a new friendship or having her life saved), she is much more likely to remember these five coincidence than the 95 other coincidences.
An example would be like this: Suppose you and another stranger purchase the same drink at the same drink store at the same time, is there a reason for it? It’s merely a coincidence. But it doesn’t mean the event was non-causal. You thought of buying a drink, you walked to the drink store, you decided on a particular drink, you used your mouth to ask for it. Something similar happened with the other person. So there are causes leading up to the coincidence.
But cause should not be confused with reason. A reason would be why it happened. It’s neither what caused it to happen (aka “how it happened”), nor what happened (or what you did) after it happened. You can fabricate your own “reason” for this coincidence if you want to. Perhaps you could come up with the reason that this person might be a potential friend, and you would start chatting with him, forging a new friendship. Maybe this could lead to a business deal, or something like that. All these are not real reasons, but decisions made by you and consequences of those decisions.
And there could many instances where you would have bought the same food or drink as a stranger, or used the same pen, or sitting together in the same class room, or anything. In fact you can find millions of coincidences if you just look for them. A lot of people are coincidentally travelling on the same bus, train or flight at this exact moment. Any reason? Nothing really, it was just caused by them wanting or having to go through the same route.
We as humans don’t remember thousands of coincidences that occur in our lives but because of confirmation bias, we remember the ones that do have some special meaning as to what happened when we acted on them.
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