I Love......Coincidences

 

I love COINCIDENCES. I saw Paul McCartney on the 40th Anniversary of Saturday Night Live the other night and it got my attention because he has been on my mind. The weird thing is that not only has he been on my mind, but the song "Maybe I'm Amazed"  (that he sang that night) has been running on a loop in my brain. I had even looked up the lyrics of it because I couldn't remember all of them. Possibly I never really knew them. (I have a habit of singing what I want to sing instead of the real lyrics of the song. All you have to do is get them to fit and sort of sound the same. Sometimes, though, I wonder how right I am and do a check on myself. My friend Adrienne can probably give a good guess to the percentage of time I get them right.) How old is that song? Why had it been engrained in my brain for weeks? Why did he choose to sing that of all his songs? I don't know, but of course when he sang it, I figured he was singing it for me. Why else would he pick that particular song? A really big coincidence. (Or was it?) One of those times that you just feel in sync with the universe. Or the universe is in sync with you. 

So often we feel like we are anonymous people in an impersonal world, yet these "coincidences" happen and we are reminded the world is small in many ways and we are special.

I've been in New York City, and run into people I knew from back home walking around Central Park. Been in a client meeting and heard the name of a long lost friend mentioned, who happened to work at that company. Pulled into a random gas station and run into a friend who was passing through town pulled in at the next pump. I will visit a church and they will sing my favorite hymn (which is "Be Thou My Vision"....not one of the standards). It would not be unusual for this to happen once or twice, but it has happened so many times it now just makes me laugh.

There are the people from different areas of my life who I have known separately for years, but then  find out they are related. I randomly start a conversation with someone in an elevator, find out where they are from, ask if they happen to know the one person I know from that place (a big city) and they not only do, but they have a great story about them to prove the point. I drive through Florida heading home from vacation, stop by Kennedy Space Center for a quick break and find out a space shuttle is about to go up. I read a book and think to myself "I'd love to meet that author" and find out she is speaking in Chapel Hill the following Saturday. I think of a person I haven't seen in 20 years, and the next day they call or send me a Facebook friend request. 

Sometimes they are big things, sometimes they are little things, but they happen to me all the time. Whether you notice them or not, I suspect they happen to you, too. These are the things that pull together the fabric of life and make you feel like you are covered by a cozy blanket. They warm my heart and make me smile. Yes, I love coincidences. Or as I prefer to think of them, love notes from God.