Coincidence--I think not

[Jasminebed]

Meister gals and guys, I invite you to share your experiences about coincidences. I personally believe that coincidences happen far too often to just be chance. It was little freaky-deakey when happybroker talked about snowflakes when I had just been thinking about just that, and was able to provide a link. But today a guest started talking about mercury (the metal not the planet) when I had gone surfing today to reply to Lauriejim's post about the good ole days. I MISS THEM TOO.

We've all run into that friend from school we haven't seen in twenty years, and then see three times in one week.

Or a buddy from Vancouver that walked five blocks in Toronto and ran into my brother on the street.

And the woman that was my roommate's best schoolchum in college that left for a Kibbutz in Israel and that I ran into four years later in Fez, Morrocco. She actually saw me the day before sitting on a second storey roof and went, naw, couldn't be. That is my fav "small world isn't" story to date, and I have pictures to back it up,

Share Meister members, I truly am interested.

 

[happygobrokey]

i refuse to believe any force/thing/power is pushing us around like little toys. but i, too, find trouble resolving coincidences as just random chance.

with the toronto example, if the person walks 5 blocks and is maybe exposed to 10000 people, and so it's really the total number of people around him divided by toronto's population likely that they would see each other. because of course if one of you notices the other out on the street it's going to be memorable.

and we're always saying it's a small world, and it is. that said, i might give in to an argument that something inside people (not a heavenly manipulating force) causes us to have more knowledge of our surroundings than we realize. maybe we can sense/smell/subconsciously-hypothesize that a pleasant coincidence awaits should we do x.

i could say a whole lot of things against coincidence, just like losing at gambling. that it's random chance, you are bound to experience it a few times, you only notice the things that stand out, and not what's going on in the thousands of other people's lives going on around you. but i have to agree with you, op, for the most part.

you can add in stuff like twin-ESP, regular ESP, mother's instinct, empathy, finishing each other's sentences... i think there's maybe more to us human beings than we understand, that over this million plus years we walked the earth that we have evolved a lot of capabilities that work in the background.

ever think about how a brain came to exist from something with no brain? evolution can probably align with many of the abilities we seem to have. in the wild we acquired a lot of instinctual skills, and in civilization we get refined and metatheoretic functions to cogitate.

it's an interesting topic and i don't want to act like i know anything, because i am just one ignorant soul trying to contemplate life, the universe, and everything, and what can i presume to know at that scale?

 

[Matthew23]

I heard a story about a man whose car had broke down. He began walking to find a payphone and found one a few miles down the road. He went to lift the receiver to call for help but as he did the phone began to ring.

He answered the phone and to his surprise it was his wife calling him to remind him to bring back some eggs and bread from the shop on the way home. He asked her how she knew he was standing beside that phone and she told him she had just dialed his mobile/cell phone number that she found on his paycheck.

He explained what had happened so she double checked the number she had dialed and it turned out she had dialed his payroll number by mistake.

__

A nice story but none the less it is just a coincidence. There is no magical force.

Each day there are millions of possible conincidences that can happen if everything falls into place. Once in a while things will fall into place. It not a miracle, the law of average would suggest that these things will happen some time.

 

[just play]

I used to be friends with this older man, he has now passed. He believed there was something in your brain, I forget what he called it, but when you think about someone it passes on something to their brain (I think) and he believed that's why you coincidencely "bump" into someone.

 

[Mousey]

Do some googling on Carl Jung and something called synchronicity.

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[Jasminebed]

Do some googling on Carl Jung and something called synchronicity.

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Mousey, you provide some useful links. I learn something new everyday, [or at least I try to] and your wikipedia link led to Littlleman's Law which says the average person should have a "miracle" happen about every 35 days.

Now, I am not convinced that I have had a "miracle" happen every thirty-five days or so, but definitively have had strange occurances.

I love philosophical discussions, but I love antectodal evididence too.

And Littleman's Law should be called Littleman's theory, and Carl Jung was humble enough to call it theory as opposed to law.

Such interesting folks and such interesting stories. Please chime in.

 

[bryand]

Do some googling on Carl Jung and something called synchronicity.

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Or 'serendipity' if the occurence serves to benefit all parties involved.

 

[RobWin]

So who wants to go on a Magical Mystery Tour !!

 

[just play]

Now, I am not convinced that I have had a "miracle" happen every thirty-five days or so, but definitively have had strange occurances.

Maybe you just don't know the miracles are happening. For instance you leave your house one minute late and there is a car crash on the route you use. That could be considered a "miracle" that you were one minute late.


I don't have strange occurances too often, seeing as I barely go out, but I get a lot of deja-vou (sp?)


Serendipity....great movie! Even my husband liked it, but he's a John Cusak fan. Go rent it if you haven't seen it.

 

[LaurieJim]

a true story

in 1984 when i was living in san diego, cal my ex- husband was in the navy there and i was pregnant and very homesick , no family around. i went into early labor , i was 5 and 1/2 months along and the baby was comming, i was told at the naval hospital that they would have to do an emergency c-section and that my child would most likely die. i asked for a chaplain and they told me a catholic chaplin was on his way, i told them i was baptist but would take any prayers from anyone, as the dr. was telling me about what i could expect, the biggest ,blackest man i have ever seen came to my bedside and pretty much told the young dr. he had his own work to do and to please leave us for a few, as my husband knelt at my bedside so did this chaplain and he prayed and cried as we did also, and then he told me your son will be just fine and dont be afraid, "you are never alone". my son was born he weighed 2 pounds and was 13 inches long, he stayed in the hospital for 4 months and is now a big ole strong 23 year old and smart...........back to what was strange , when i went over to the base chapel to thank this wonderful chaplain, i was told , the only black chaplain that had been at the naval hospital had been t.a.d (temp active duty)and had died 4-1-84 two days before my son was born on april 3erd. this has always haunted me, was he an angel, ill never know but in my heart i think so...............laurie

 

[irishgilly]

jeepers creepers Lauriejim, read your story and got a chill right down my back! that is really a miricle!

 

[Jasminebed]

Maybe you just don't know the miracles are happening..

I see miracles daily. Cut my first irises from the garden today. Sun came up & I lived to tell the tale. Perhaps depends on the "miracle". The only true miracle in my life is my daughter, and not as "miraculous" as lauriejim. Perhaps Littleman underestimated how may miracles daily?

 

[Matthew23]

I don't believe in miracles because by definition a miracle is:

1. an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.
2. such an effect or event manifesting or considered as a work of God.

I believe everything happens as a result of a previous action. Supernatural forces? come'on!

It's not a miracle that a child happened to miss a speeding car by only a few inches. It's not because a God or angel is looking over the child. The child was not hit by the car because he/she was standing a few inches away. Why is that so difficult for some people to accept?

I will believe in miracles if I see one, but that will never happen because everything that has happened in this world so far can be explained with a logical explanation.

Although I don't believe in such stuff I fully respect those who do wish to believe that kind of stuff.

 

[happygobrokey]

how about, for instance, those documented cases of certain species of reptiles and amphibians just "raining" from the sky? what might be the logical and natural cause of that? don't tell me a tornado dropped 500 identical frogs and no other organisms in one place, yet doing no damage to the area. that must be it!

i think the supernatural is alotta bologna too, but to say that there is a valid explanation for everything that has ever occurred is i think overstepping. maybe what i read was a hoax, but surely something on the level of this has taken place somewhere before.

and that definition hinges on when it's explainable. things that seemed like magic a few centuries ago are now obviously explained. and if i see something that i can't immediately explain, i could at that time call it a miracle, even if on retrospection i could conceive of how it likely came to pass.

now stop telling us there's no santa!