Daily Archives: February 18, 2013

How Does Coincidence Work?

My friend Sean, Cassie and I were talking about coincidence yesterday over some nachos.  It would seem that we all believe that strange coincidences happen to all of us and that it is kind of magical.  Like just as you talk about someone; they call you on the phone. Or just when you need something it appears as if out of nowhere.

When I was younger a friend of mine saw a hat that he really wanted.  He was dirt poor so the chances of him getting it were practically non-existent.  Later that day we were driving down the road and he saw something in the middle of the street and made us pull over.  He ran out and picked up, you guessed it, the EXACT same hat that he was looking at earlier.  It was as-if the universe had sent it to him.

In the most recent case Cassie and I had a $20 gift card to use at Safeway (our local grocery store).  We had received this gift card through our participation in the Weigh and Win program at the Library.  Anyhow, we were gathering a few items at the store; seaweed, a couple apples, trashbags,  oranges and a hand of bananas.   When we were using the self checkout we had put everything on the scale except for the bananas and it came to around $19.76.   Hmmm that’s close and we still had these bananas to weigh.   I looked at Cassie and said “Well…The bananas are going to throw us over $20 if we buy them.”  She looked at the bananas and with her out of the box thinking replied “Well..What if we buy just 1 banana?”.

You see I had viewed the bananas as one item.  I sometimes forget to use my brain and instead revert to what I am starting to call “Default thinking” which is just programming and isn’t really thinking at all.

So we picked one banana and threw it on the scale.  To our surprise this is what we saw:

safeway
A .23 cent banana to EXACTLY $20 Total

We could have picked any other banana, or checked out in any other order and it wouldn’t have turned out this way.

How does coincidence work? Is it some kind of non-local dark energy at work? Science is now seeing evidence of a “fifth force” that controls an invisible “dark energy”.  Perhaps this has something to do with it?  Some kind of quantum entanglement?

In either case coincidence needs more attention.  The next day we saw a robbery at Safeway and I am not sure how this all relates yet.  I have a feeling it has to do with helping others as the robbers simply ran out of the store with a cart full of food.  They started to throw it into their car and drive off.  These people needed food so badly that they stole it and here we have free gift cards in our pockets.

I suppose this is where religion and spirituality or just higher purpose comes into play which would be our next logical step as  humans.  We have our basic needs met and are trying now to expand into the next layer of hierarchy of needs.   Instead of thinking about the robbery from our perspective as witnesses we are now thinking about it from the perspective of the robbers and the store clerk who attempted to stop them by standing in front of the escaping car, and how we are more connected to the event than just watching it unfold.

In our pockets we had received the gift of free food.  How do we connect this with those who truly need it before they rob a store?  Apparently being on the front of the local newspaper promoting it isn’t enough.   And maybe this is looking into things too deeply…lol.  In any case life is much stranger than it appears on the surface.

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