coincidences & attention

are there pure coincidences, or does everything happen for a reason?

the more experiences i go through (or the older i get), the less certain i become about the answer.

what does it all mean, if there is no meaning? i think it must mean something. but what?

i went on another walk today. and a run before that in the morning. and i try to medidate on a daily basis. incredible, what a full day it was.

i have a lot more to say (or rather write) about hans and his book, because the more i read, the more parallels seem to emerge between our lives.

at the very end of the book, there is a short quotation that has stayed with me. translated loosely from german, it reads something like this:

every person has three sides.

there is the side i see.
there is the side you see.
and there is the side neither of us can see.

i like this idea. because every encounter is necessarily incomplete.

i never see the whole of another person. nor do they see the whole of me. there are parts that remain hidden, even from ourselves. somewhere in our unconscious self, in our primal self.

and yet meeting someone, developing a friendship creates something interesting. a shared perspective where two people can begin to see things together that neither would have noticed alone. despite not having a shared consciousness. together we may be able to see things that one alone cannot see.

is it a coincidence that we are both one of nine children, of whom eight survived into adulthood? we both have brothers that passed away shortly after birth.

is it a coincidence that both of us grew up within family systems marked by difficult dynamics between our parents, relationships that ultimately ended in separation? that we both tried to somehow make the relationship between our parents work? only to find out that that doesn’t work.

is it a coincidence that our paths crossed on a mountain trail in tyrol? that we started talking? that we stayed in touch?

that i find myself drawn to some of the same things that have shaped hans' life, such as long-distance hikes, bicycle journeys, connecting movement and adventure with charitable projects in africa? in his case in uganda, in my case in ghana.

is it a coincidence which people enter our lives, and when? which conversations happen? which books arrive in our mailbox? what is written in them (the parallels that appear on many of the pages)? which encounters remain fleeting, and which continue to unfold years later?

i do not know.

if i were forced to place myself somewhere on the spectrum between skepticism and faith, i would probably choose a place somewhere in the middle. which, admittedly, is a rather large territory.

part of me is skeptical. i understand probability. statistics. i understand pattern recognition. i know that the human mind is very skilled at connecting dots and weaving stories from them. perhaps that is all that is happening. likeminded people meet on mountain trails.

but after enough unlikely meetings, unexpected kindnesses, perfectly timed conversations (and in particular the contents of them), challenges that life throws at somebody and force them to grow, and encounters that seem to arrive precisely when they were needed, i have become reluctant to dismiss everything as mere chance.

not because i have proof. not because i possess some hidden knowledge. i know that i don’t know, and not even that. sokrates, popper.

simply because lived experience keeps presenting questions for which skepticism alone feels incomplete. perhaps every event is the result of countless conditions coming together. perhaps life continuously creates the circumstances from which certain encounters become possible. perhaps that is all. another pattern, by nature, by the universe.

or perhaps there is something more. i do not know whether there is a higher power active in these things. i do not know whether there is a grand design, a destiny, or god quietly pulling invisible threads. my scepticism tells me that this image is too simplistic. but i think that whatever it might be, it exceeds our ability to fully describe or define it. so it is a possibility.

there is something else. attention changes experience. the more attention i pay, the more meaningful life appears to become. the more carefully i listen (or in this case, read), the more connections emerge.

the more present i am, the more often seemingly ordinary moments reveal unexpected depth, more connections. perhaps the question is not whether god, destiny, fate, or the universe gives events meaning.

perhaps meaning emerges in the encounter itself. in the meeting between people. in shared experience. in our relationship with one another and with the reality we move through together.

through our willingness to notice. to listen. to read. to remain curious. to remain open.

in that sense, coincidence may be less about hidden forces acting upon us and more about our capacity to together recognize patterns, relationships, and possibilities that might otherwise remain unseen.

whether those connections were always there, or whether they arise through the act of paying attention, i cannot say.

but either way, attention seems to make life richer. deeper. more interconnected. and perhaps that possibility alone is worth taking seriously.

i’ll leave you with another citation from hans’ book, translated to english and spanish:

my life is a gift. i am very grateful that i live. i try to give this wonder life a here and now. i am aware, that my life has a use-by date - and an end.

when i think about that end, i feel gratitude for what is. my heart beats, works for me, lets me live, also when i sleep, until my last heartbeat. how long yet, i don’t know. thank you live, you move me until my death.

mi vida es un regalo. estoy muy agradecido de vivir. intento dar a esta maravillosa vida un aqui y ahora. soy consciente de que mi vida tiene fecha de caducidad y un final.

cuando pienso en ese final, siento gratitud por lo que es. mi corazón late, trabaja para mí, me permite vivir, incluso cuando duermo, hasta mi último latido. cuánto tiempo más, no lo sé. gracias, vida, me conmueves hasta mi muerte.