Coincidences

What is it about the overlap of events that constitutes them being called "coincidences"?  Is it the quality and completeness of individual events leading to similar events or details, that warrants them being "coincidences"?  Or is it the frequency in which we register events or details, that makes us notice them several times, which in turn upgrades seemingly unimportant events to the status of "coincidence"?  In a recent email to my sister, I wrote:
"There have been weird coincidences happening lately, and I know coincidences just happen and maybe it's probability that makes you notice certain things a certain number of times, and disregard the non-important events as non-coincidences."


So how can I explain the spike of coincidences happening lately?  The frequency of events has been occurring at an alarming rate.


Examples will not do justice to the strength of the feelings behind the circumstances, yet merely serve to remind me of all this at a later time.


1. I went to the beach, without mentioning it to anyone back home. When I returned, I received an email from my sister saying she dreamt we were at a beach, and described the location, which was exactly laid out in her dream, the way I was there in reality.  (Hence leading to the email response about coincidences.)

2. I was in the middle of the jungle, reflecting upon my life, and I began to think about horse training.  And I mean, REALLY delve into it, as in an epiphany.  Giddy with delight at having tapped into some kind of gut feeling, we returned to the cabin where I was invited to watch a documentary about caves, and the trailer was about... you guessed it! Horse training. And not only that, but the song was off Pearl Jam's newer album that I've been needing to get, and there it was - my favorite song sung by Eddie Vedder.  (So if someone would like to help me out by obtaining both this Sundance film, and Pearl Jam's Backspacer album, I'd be happy to accept them.)


3. I met myself. My 50-something-year-old self.  Although I've met many people who remind me of me, or have had somewhat similar experiences, I don't think I've ever met mySELF.  And there I was.  After two lunch dates, I just sat back and smiled, and let the coincidences roll in. It was an overload, and we kept getting goosebumps at the same time as we talked about everything under the sun, and BOOM -- coincidence,  BOOM -- coincidence.  It got to the point where it became easier to point out events that were NOT coincidences or things we had in common.


4. Riding in a bus to work one day, I was watching the scenery go by.  My friend was in another seat across the aisle.  I witnessed a homeless man sitting under a tree, coddling something that looked like a blanket.  As the bus got closer, I saw it was a cat, and the man was hugging and kissing this cat, and it was so beautiful and touching, that I pointed it out to my friend, and went on about the human-animal bond.  She looked at me funny, and now I'm getting used to these looks from everyone around me, because she was in disbelief about the timing of my comment.  She pulled out the magazine she was reading and pointed to the article entitled "Human-Animal Bonds" in the Association of Zoos and Aquariums magazine.  


5.  I moved into my new apartment the day before yesterday.  I walked in and introduced myself to my new roommates.  The one who I'll share a room with, shares her name with the 50-year-old me in Item #3 above.  After some chatting, I find out her boyfriend is in the Peace Corps.  None of this may seem like a coincidence, but I'm not living with Peace Corps volunteers, but rather STRI fellows and interns and doctoral candidates.  


The list goes on and on.  Mostly events occurring in the last one to two weeks.


March 19, 2012: More to report.


6. Sitting in my new digs, writing this blog, I hear a knock on the door.  I open it, and there stand two Colombians looking for my Colombian roommate.  I recognize the one standing on the right, and we point fingers at each other and both say, "I know you."  Those initial moments are always entertaining, when the human brain searches through its repertoire of people and events, connecting puzzle pieces, figuring out WHAT WHERE WHEN and HOW you know the WHO.  Then I recall being briefly introduced to him last week at a STRI talk, before being whisked away to Casco Viejo where my friend is house-sitting.  [I'll add to this event, that the house-sitting is for a STRI post-doc and his wife, the house is located by a Peace Corps family owned hotel, where I met my 50-year-old Self, and by her house, which is why she was in Panama to begin with.  Also, the house-sitting friend and I both moved to our respective new digs within 1 day of each other, bringing us from opposite ends of the bus lines 2 hours away distance, to now within walking distance, or a 5 minute taxi ride.]


7. New neighbor's boyfriend's name: male version of same name of my new roommate, my 50-year-old Self, AND my Best Friend from Peace Corps, who has already booked his plane ticket to come visit me in May.  Oh yeah, AND my OLD roommate from Long Beach, who came down with her husband last year to visit me in Peru.


8. Stream-of-consciousness conversation on bus to El Valle.  [Oh yeah -- "pre-coincidence" coincidence -- our other frog project is located in El Valle, and I've been meaning to get out there, but haven't had the opportunity.  So when my new neighbor, over a celebratory Irish Car Bomb for St. Patrick's Day, mentions that he had been planning to go to El Valle the next day, I was game.]  So on the 2-hour bus ride to El Valle, we chatted away to my heart's content, and he asks me, "Why do people paint the bottoms of trees white?"  I let out an auditory scream that may have startled the Panamanian passengers.  I have been wondering that and asking random people that SAME question for over the past year, since I was working with trees in reforesting Peru, I became more aware of trees and hence, more aware of this strange world-wide behavior of painting tree trunks white.  Was it so cars see them?  Insect control?  Purely aesthetic?  Ok, we'll Google that later (and we did). And I was right.
Why do people paint trees white?


9.  The bus was navigating the curvy roads as we left the coast and entered an undulating terrain that caused me to throw my hands in the air and say, "Rollercoaster!"  I made mention of yesterday's near fender-bender in the taxi, and I'm so used to crazy South & Central American driving that not even one milligram of adrenaline was released.  I said that was a problem, that not many events release the adrenaline these days.  (Except for the loofah that fell on me during my first shower in the apartment, and with my eyes closed my initial reaction was that I was back in the village and it was some huge spider or snake.)  But I digress (as I always do)...
Looking out the bus window, I see a hawk flying in all its glory, meandering its way above the nooks and crannies of the dormant volcano we were traveling across.  I tell my new neighbor, "I've never had the desire to paraglide or hangglide, but my dad sent me this link about para-hawking in Nepal.  You are tamdem with a hawk trainer, and you are there in the air watching a hawk fly next to you, rotating its directional feathers."  I thought that might be a good activity to get some adrenaline out of me.  My neighbor pointed out the improbability of going to Nepal, and I said, "Actually...you'd be surprised at how many of my friends have mentioned Tibet/Nepal lately."  Like my English-teacher friend in Peru, and my 50-year-old Self who is formulating a business that involves a connection in Nepal.  And that was the end of that conversation.  Almost not worth mentioning in the coincidences list.  And then there's always that final clincher that is the tipping point.  Back home several hours later, I was once again researching my next career move, and Googled "equine therapy" just to see where that leads.  First entry: "Animal Therapy for Kids - The KAT Centre Brings Dogs to Schools and Orphanages in Nepal."  Hmmmm...

10. Several years ago, I had a dream.  I mean, I've had millions of dreams in my life.  But this one was so vivid that it has remained with me.  I DREW it for god's sake, like in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  I was convinced that I would find those pointy cloud forest mountains on the slopes of Peru.  Nope, nada.  Yesterday we were running out of time after seeing the Panamanian Golden Frog and other animals at the zoo, so we were deciding between the square trees or the thermal baths, located on opposite sides of town.  We opted for the square trees.  The taxi dropped us off at a Hacienda and pointed us towards the trail that leads to the loop to see the square trees.  Stepping out of the taxi into the cool after-rain, I see my mountains.  I stop.  Wait, can it be? Wait, I was in a hotel, looking out the window, and there were those haunting mountains.  I'm in the right place, not the right view though.  Wait, can it be?  No. That was just a dream.  

11.  Walking down the path to the square trees, I have already shared this weird experience with my two friends since I stopped in the middle of our speedy tour of El Valle to look at the mountains, I had to tell them what was happening and why I looked noticeably jolted.  So, in good form, my neighbor says we better find that view that I was searching for, and we head up the trail towards the trees.  We pass a little cabina on the way back that almost frames the mountain like a window, and he says maybe it was a window in my dream, but in reality it's this little wooden viewing area.  Although I tell him it was definitely a hotel window that reveals the view of these mystical mountains, we take a picture for good measure.  He hands me my camera and says he took several. I thank him for that, since my sister is a photographer and I know you have to take lots of photos to get a good one.  I say, "Imagine you were somewhere you'll never be again, like the Eiffel Tower, and your friend takes just one photo, and when you get back to the states, and you are going through your photos, it didn't turn out well, you're stuck with that bad photo."


LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, DO I EVEN NEED TO CONTINUE WRITING WITH WHAT WAS HIS RESPONSE?

Jake in Paris.  I did not KNOW he had been to France, until I made up some cliche place where you'd want a  good, once-in-a-lifetime photo.  Okay, are we getting it yet?
And the list of coincidences goes on and on and on...