When the world winks back
Hardcopy newspapers have no algorithm
There are no coincidences anymore, as algorithms take the reins of our lives.
When “coincidences” do occur I more often than not rack them up to my phone eavesdropping on me.
But when Art, or the written word, actually do reflect back at how I am feeling, I am connected to the universe in a new way.
We recently sold the house and moved into a “downsized” empty nest that feels bigger than our old one. We haven’t yet found our place and we’ve resorted to calling each other on our phones from one room to the next.
Why?
Then the Wall Street Journal answers me by declaring from the front page: Boomers Were Supposed to Downsize. They Are Buying Bigger Homes Instead.
I am learning about myself because of what others are doing.
Still reeling from the death of our beloved dog I recently wrote about the times, late at night, that Lulu and I would be the only ones up in the house — the only ones up in the world — and she’d stare at me as if she were worried about something. And I’d stare back looking for help with my own problems.
Then I pull open the newspaper to find a review of the book, The Dog’s Gaze, about the connection between humans and dogs. It happened to come the day I received Lulu’s ashes with a final paw print which I buried in our backyard.
And then I stumble on an article: ‘Throw it all out’: My parents’ stuff is more than clutter which is the corollary to my own article about the things we keep and the things we let go. In it, Katie Roiphe couldn’t part with a $10 poster that her father treated as if it were an original Miro: It felt like getting rid of it would blot out everything he loved or desired or accomplished. These are not rational thoughts, but it’s so easy for these objects to become an extension of the person, a part of them, in some mysterious, utterly confounding way.
For me it is this:
It can be hard to give up the ambiance of your childhood, the remnants of a vanished home. Certain items conjure sensations you have lost access to. A friend of mine has a delicate silver asparagus holder…How can this be worth keeping? … And yet it sits on a shelf. “It connects me to the dinners my grandparents threw,” she says, “romantic and obsolete.”
What does it all mean?
If you were my friend Mark, and others closer to their faith, you'd say it's God "winking at you." Others have written entire books about it — How God Speaks Directly to You Through the Power of Coincidence — as if the pattern itself were the proof.
Objectively speaking, coincidence can be explained by simple math. Take the “birthday problem”: How many people do you need in a room before a pair of them will share a birthday? The answer is surprising small: only 23 people.
I know that coincidence can be math in a costume.
But I choose magic and mystery over math.
Do you believe in coincidence or math?
It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences … but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
