The Words I Never Said // A Collection of Essays

Letter #10 // Refuting the theory of coincidences

Dear Friend,

Oh no. You're haunting me again. I scribble affirmations in my notebook like a true millennial and ponder whether I worded the sentences right. I analyze my lacks as if they were methodical mistakes. I'm thinking I should paraphrase this or that a little. I juggle those ideas as though that would suffice to mold a desired reality. But maybe it does? Well, especially looking at how in this case the desired reality is so... external. Sovereign. Most importantly, it's unpredictable. This was clearly proven by the short glimpse I caught of you this week.

So, I got in trouble with all my paraphrasing. Yes, I blame those affirmations for what happened. If I weren't such a principled atheist believer, such a liberal optimist, such a fantasizing dreamer, and such an irrational fool — in other words, such a human — that event would've gone straight over my head and caused a moderately pleasant feeling of surprise that would've lasted for those few minutes at most. If I actually lived while following my rational mind, like I love boasting about, I would've swept all those life events into a rubbish container with the label "coincidences". Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm not very eco-friendly in this context; I'm pretty sure there's probably not even such a container in my head. Some evil spirit that lives in my head and seems to thrive on my anxieties massacres any concepts of coincidences, and no matter how much I'd try convincing myself, I genuinely can't make myself believe coincidences can exist. And thus instead I ended up being swept off my feet myself.

It's interesting how that evening I had greatly doubted whether I should turn up at the right place at the right time. Circumstances that changed last minute notably lowered my determination. At one point I had even decided to choose the exact opposite set of actions. Yet for some reason, this bitter sense of uncertainty gnawed at me, and the thought I'd just be giving up this way was too hurtful for my ego. Therefore I finally made the decision I made: I said "Yes!" to turning up at the right place at the right time.

That evening's prelude was slippery, to be honest. Awkwardness and discomfort were blended into a sticky, nauseating smoothie, and I sensed the creature I call anxiety crawling out of the sewerage. Time passed, and events unfolded. New and not-so-new faces changed one another like Powerpoint slides. The creature sat, waiting for its moment, but eventually, with no disastrous happenings, it stopped needlessly hissing and climbed back down underground. Meanwhile, I was too focused on concentrating my energy on problem-solving, motivated by my innate ardor and curiosity as well as a fear to make a fool of myself. I barely saw people around me; don't get me wrong, I'm bad at looking at the surface only, but back then I wasn't pressuring myself to be a personality archeologist, master of social skills, or some impeccable orator. I let myself happily be an ordinary person around ordinary people. And I didn't see any universal powers in that yet.

Until the end of it. Suddenly, just a few (non)accidental words said by a (non)accidental person forcefully ripped me out of my peaceful, mundane little world, and I was presented with a staggering example of how complicatedly could the Universe's threads be entangled. The piece of paper representing my flow of life was folded in half and the poked-out hole became a wormhole to the past, and not just to any past, but to the most coincidental, seemingly in no way special point years ago. All I could think was how my own memory I so respected and cherished betrayed me. Everything I believed about my ability to mindfully take notice of people and record their faces in my memory began tumbling down. It was a total, paralyzing puzzlement, thankfully, in a positive context.

After that, the Universe poured a whole stack of coincidences like Aquarius from their pitcher. All distance in time collapsing. The clothing. The chain of people who, apparently, had tied us together a lot closer than we could've ever guessed. Everything spun, spun, and spun in a whirlwind, completely robbing me of my belief in a mathematically calculatable world — no, wait, that's wrong — actually strengthening that belief hundreds of thousands of times to a level of such madness that every single life moment from birth got a matching mathematical operation, and its result the following moment used for its own calculations, and suddenly every detail of this reality appeared to be directly derived from specific past elements, and I realized the whirlwind didn't actually emerge so unexpectedly but was programmed many years ago, in that exact moment to which it now flung me towards. The theory of coincidences was completely refuted.

Although it wasn't just those factual details of the event that made me mistake that person for you, my Friend. My perception of reality was mostly shaken by the form of the event, its frame, the subtext, and the spaces between the lines. If everything were a mere coincidence, why was his sincere enthusiasm so contagious? Why did our laughter echo through the room like that? Why did our hands, our legs, and our postures shift so oddly? Why were my cheeks so sore; was I grinning that much? Why, for the love of tomatoes, your cognitive functions worked so effectively? Oh yes, when I ask my rational mind for its opinion, it draws a clear conclusion: nothing special happened here because it wasn't meant to. The wormhole that led you to the past was momentary and accidental, thus it couldn't have had any emotional charge of this kind.

So much time I spent wondering why my facial muscles were so hard to control that day. Night after night I spent trying to accept my rational mind's conclusion, and now I'm finally coming back to my usual flow of life. Except now I'm different, having experienced an unexpected grounding. When you spend your entire life stuck in your own head, you become a transparent gust of wind, floating with no solid substance in it; you exist only for yourself and only within yourself. Hence, when you come across people who turn their heads at a certain angle and at a particular moment notice a tiny flash of your soul, they can say: "I see you". Then that wave of air becomes heavier, descends a little lower, and, in disbelief, you ask: "You can see me?" And sometimes there are moments when you listen to the other person and realize they never needed to turn their head or eyes in any special way, they simply noticed you. They noticed you because you aren't just some abstract concept or a separate little world flying around in empty space. Your existence extends further from your head, and by just living your life you are visible; in fact, it seems like sometimes someone's brain even dedicates a whole series of unique neural impulses that lasts years just for you. This latter thought has been mercilessly imploding my mind for the last couple of days. 

Truthfully, I don't know. The verdict my rational mind presented doesn't have enough proof either, it's mainly supposed to protect me from self-destruction. I don't know whether I mistook someone for you again or whether those affirmations did actually pave the road for me to get here. But for now, I can't know these things. Of course, those few moments when the whirlwind stormed didn't provide enough information, therefore I shouldn't rush to oppose my intuition or defend it. If it's wrong, this will come clear pretty soon, and if it's right, gradually more and more sufficient proof will emerge and perhaps one day we'll even sway the rational mind to our side. Either way, I've done all the necessary overthinking around this situation.

It could also be that as I'm investigating the seashore with my magnifying glass, sometimes I find a grain of sand in a different color, jump up in excitement, yell "Eureka!", and, holding up the particle, I completely forget the faraway reality until it slaps me across the face and I kneel into the sand again, returning to my quest. Yes, I like that idea. You, scattered into pieces, and me, a professional puzzle solver and treasure hunter. Me, feverishly grasping onto the tiniest clues that could possibly lead me to my goal. There's one thing clear here: I am looking for you. This is well known. But the question is, are you looking for me? Are you just as much of a constructor, carefully collecting pieces of me from dark alleyways, sludgy river banks, and rustling oak tree hollows? I'd want to believe that you are. After all, that's what I'm repeating every morning in my affirmations...

With love, your loving lunatic,

— Your Friend.

(October 15th, 2022)