The universe is so complex. We drift through life, crisscrossing through an array of situations and coincidence. The world seems to erupt before my eyes, people flitting in and out of my life, some stay while others drift. These light musings cross my mind lay my life out in front of me, wanting to create an accurate picture of it’s beauty and pain. The picture I attempt to create is made up of experiences that were made up of a billion coincidences.
The universe upholds everything: every possibility, word, thought, song, tragedy, and moment. And it somehow, impossibly, encapsulates its beauty into the creation of thought.
People cross one anothers lives, like cars on a road, some parking there for days, others zooming by. But no one stays on the road forever and only fools would want to. So the people on this wild journey of life meet and some call it a coincidence. A mere circumstance, a chance meeting.
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.” (Conan Doyle)
These coincidences are works of art, not mere happenings. Perhaps these events are mere happenings, casual chance, not coming to anything. However, I cannot believe that coincidences are random. My life experiences mean more than a random occurrence of events. These experiences deserve more than to simply be called coincidence.
My wandering mind extends to the possibilities of these things never occurring. If I were to wipe the chalkboard of life clear, to start anew, my life would be altered irrevocably.
“Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.” (Crichton)
Every small moment molds us. These tiny moments call to me, all stacking on one another.
“Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” (Michael Crichton)
Existence is made of small moments, a tiny brushstroke, transforming them into a masterpiece of dazzling colours and light.
“For some people, small, beautiful events are what life is all about.” (Doctor Who)
And this, my dear reader, is what my mind focuses on. The moments. The simple aspects of my life where I want to crawl into that moment and live there forever, where the bliss is tangible. They come from seeing my sister after long and suffering months of being apart, or staring in awe at the infamous Big Ben as it chimes and the excitement bubbles though me. I want to stay in those special moments forever.
“But a thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts.” (Avengers, Vision.)
Life is dangerously exciting and infinitely incredible with every coincidence and happenstance.
“Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.” (Oscar Wilde).
To find beauty in a coincidence is to grasp onto the tendrils of life and take hold. As humans, we must believe that there is more to our lives than random moments put sloppily together. Life for us must feel important, it must matter. And that is why coincidence is considered fate. Some prefer the term ‘chain reaction’ or ‘the butterfly effect’ but it all means the same thing, that our lives contain some semblance of meaning to our relative perspectives. It must or we will be driven mad with the meaninglessness of it all. While we create our own free will, we can appreciate life’s gentle coincidences, the push in a wildly different direction.
The purpose of coincidence isn’t to scoff at the beautiful events of the world, it’s to uphold them. To understand coincidence is to believe that each experience has meaning even if it was a mere coincidence.
“The universe is big. It’s vast and complicated and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles” (Doctor Who)
Every day is a miracle that each and every one of us is alive. All of us a proof that coincidence created us and without these little miracles, none of us would exist.
