On Serendipity
Sometime in 1991 when I was still a grad student, my roommate (Chancy, no pun intended) brought a guest ( a friend of his friend) home for dinner. We ate and then chatted as we normally did after dinner. Then it was time for me to leave for an evening of introspection back at my office. Our guest got up to leave along with me. I took him for a walk, and li’l did I know that it would turn out to be a walk down memory lane.
It was a brisk night, for fall had just started and the air was fresh. Cold air hitting our face after a hot ‘n spicy Indian meal sure did wake us up. We started to get acquainted and I asked him where he grew up. It turned out that he grew up in Madras where I had spent my formative years. Further inquiry revealed that he went to the same high school as me. What a coincidence, right? He was a few years my senior and I mentioned to him that I used to know a guy who was a few years older to me at school. I go on to tell him that the guys name was Ashok and that I used ride the rickshaw with him to school and would go to his house to watch the Flintstones on TV. He is listening to me all this while and a smile starts to form. He looks at me and says — hey I am that Ashok. That apparently was his pet name and he now went by something else. What a coincidence? Some quirk of fate got us to go for a walk together that day and discover that we were acquainted some time in the past.
What is the probability that something like this could happen? Have you had a similar experience? In our limited life span we meet so many people — friends, acquaintances, relatives. We lose touch with many of them as the years roll by. We tend to forget how they look, or they no longer look as they used to. So even if we bump into someone from our past we may not recognize them.
Let’s say there are a half dozen people from our past a childhood friend, a high school sweet heart, or our college paramour that we wished we could meet again. What are the chances that our paths would cross again? I am not talking of googling someone or connecting with them on Linked In and then meeting up with them. Social media has definitely helped us to be more connected. But the accidental meet up is quite different.
What forces need to align to make such meetings happen? Is there a weak force of gravitation that directs these connected individuals and draws them to a common area? Is this a willful force or an unconscious attractor that is not visible to our naked eyes? There are many questions we can ask but there are a few answers.
So what makes these chance meetings happen. Do we will them to happen. I know that’s not true for I had nothing to do with my meeting with Ashok. Also, I have wished for many other meet ups to happen but those are yet to materialize. So what could be the driving force that drives two souls to seek each other. I can’t imagine that there is something supernatural that makes this happen. There must be some quantum physical force that is yet to be discovered that is driving this meet up of kindred spirits. While physicists are working to understand the fundamental compositions of matter it’s probably worth for them to investigate the forces that influence serendipitous human interactions.
So rest assured you surely are going to meet the people you are destined to meet not because you do something but because the hidden attractors will drive those people to a location where you will be. You probably won’t know who they are, just like they are unaware that they are about to meet you.
