Coincidences

In My Humble Opinion
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This thread is for discussing coincidences in whatever form they have affected you. Or in whatever way you interpret them. Or to whatever degree they overlap with Synchronicity and related topics.

If you can link to other threads on the subject, please do. There must be many of them.

The ones that happen to me that I’m most amused/amazed by are where I’ll be working a word puzzle (crossword, acrostic, whatever) and either listening to the radio or watching TV or otherwise in the midst of some other stream of communication, maybe even other people talking nearby.

It doesn’t happen often enough to be boring, but often enough to make me pause and consider, that a word I’m seeing in that puzzle will be overheard at the same moment. There are less amazing times when the word I worked into a puzzle within the same day will pop up later on TV or the radio or in conversation.

Years ago, no idea how many even, I began reading a book on Synchronicity, which purported to be a serious exposition of Pauli’s and Jung’s focusing on the matter from differing viewpoints and arriving at similar conclusions as to what’s going on with Coincidences. The book rapidly went all New Age and weird soon afterward and I never did finish it.

But the thing that struck me was that the odds that these coincidences should happen are way greater than that they shouldn’t.

Discussion? Other views on the issue?

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Some clients had moved from AZ to MN and had not received their final paychecks from their previous job so I typed up a letter on our organization’s letterhead with the pertinent information and mailed it off. About three months later I asked another employee if we had ever heard back from the company or the clients, and she said no.

THE NEXT DAY she emailed me to say that the clients had received their checks.

I just thought that was neat. :slight_smile:

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A series of coincidences

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I notice it most when I’ve been thinking about a particular episode of a TV show, and lo and behold, within a few days, that episode will be aired.

Of course, I don’t notice the times I’ve been thinking about an episode and it doesn’t air, so that’s why it may appear that I have TV ESP. :wink:

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I was recently IMing with someone and mentioned that I had just finished watching “It Could Happen To You”. In the background, I had IMDB loading up so that I could do my ritual review of the IMDB page, but the window was minimized while it loaded. The person I was talking to couldn’t place the movie and asked what it was about. I typed in my summary then brought up the trivia page a moment later.

My summary:

“You know, cop gives waitress 2 million dollar tip.”

The trivia page finished loading right after I hit enter, and said the title was originally going to be “Cop gives waitres two million dollar tip.” Was a bit freaky.

Once I was listening to the radio and (I’m going to have turn in my cool badge after admitting this) tuned into a station as the last few lines of Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” was playing. “Damn,” I said to my friend, “I love that song. Wish they’d play it again.” Through a stroke of coincidence-meets-accident, the song did indeed play again immediately. We both had to pick our jaws up off our laps.

One of the weirdest though was a few years ago. My first husband and I had recently reconciled, and for the first time in a long time, things were going really well in my life; I had the dog I’d always wanted, I had a job that I loved, and my marriage was getting back on its feet (for a while, anyway). About 6 months before that, I’d applied for a job with a company that was going through a merger - because of the merger, I was offered the job, but never actually started because things apparently went haywire there. So, after a few months of waiting, I finally accepted a different job, where I was really happy.

Days after the reconciliation, I was talking to my husband and remarking on how wonderfully everything was going. “You know what’s going to happen,” I joked, “in like three days, XYZ Company is going to call me and ask me if I still want a job, just to throw a wrench into the works.”

Exactly three days later, XYZ Company DID call, and offered me an even better job, which I eventually accepted. But after they called the first time, I hung up the phone, a little bit dumbstruck, and just stared at my husband, and told him he’d never believe who it was on the phone. Of course, he didn’t believe me at first… That was a pretty wild coincidence.

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Oh and for the one coincidence that truly stunned me into silence…

Things between the first husband and I eventually did fall apart again, largely due to the fact that he was having an affair with his coworker. I wasn’t coping too well, and I asked him if he’d just go to my first pscychologist’s appointment with me (thinking that she’d tell him there were valid reasons why I was the way I was, really). Get to the office, and as we walk in, a man walks out. I begin talking to the psychologist and telling her about the divorce, and the affair. I tell her that he is seeing someone that he works with, and she asks me what the woman’s name is. I tell her, and she asks what her last name is. I didn’t know, so I turned to the ex, who was very reluctant to say, but did tell her.

The psychologist said, “That’s what I thought.”

My mind just reeled at that statement, and I tried to put pieces together. My initial thought was that the “other woman” was also using this same psychologist, but it soon came to light that it was in fact the other woman’s husband who was her client - and was the man who we had just passed when we walked in. Well, that turn of events actually turned out to be a really bad situation, my psychologist revealed herself to be a psychotic lunatic who didn’t care two shakes about patient confidentiality and I stopped seeing her soon after. But I’ll tell you what, I wish I had a picture of my reaction when she said “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”