Not a chance in life

COINCIDENCE? </p> <p>I will tell you about a meeting between with an acquaintance I hadn’t seen for more than ten years, in conditions that make the meeting too coincidental for mere coincidence. </p> <p>The conditions and laws of the universe may determine my biological life, but not my day to day life. In my view the conditions and laws of physical reality are complex in such a degree that it provides me with free will. So the coincidence I will tell you of can’t considered to be fate or predestination. </p> <p>I will describe all the steps leading up to the meeting in which some kind of choice or lack of choice was involved. About five years before the meeting I lived in Gouda (in the Netherlands) with my wife. We lived in a nice house next to a couple of lakes. I lived there quite satisfactorily, but my wife had vague dreams of a different neighbourhood in Gouda. When she actually suggested to have a look for a house on sale there, I answered, “If we ever mover from here it’s only to live in Rotterdam” (where I was born but had seldom been for over thirty years). A decisive stop on any plans to move house, I felt sure. </p> <p>About a year later my wife told me she had been in Rotterdam and had seen an old harbour quarter at the river which was being renovated. Two years later we actually moved in there. </p> <p>One day we cycled through the outskirts of Rotterdam and we had to return earlier because of the rain. By coincidence we passed the neighbourhood I was born in. We passed the street of my birth and I looked back to my wife and said “at the other side of that street was my dentist” and at that point I stretched my arm to point out the house where the dentist had his practice. Someone was walking between my finger and the dentist, and he looked up, surprised, and said: “don’t I know you?” True, we had been at a school for drama directors together and later he had directed a short play I had written. That had been in the Hague and we both didn’t live in Rotterdam at that time. We had lost contact a long time ago. </p> <p>Surprising as that may have been, at the same time my wife recognised his partner in life who was walking next to him. It was a close professional contact of her. They don’t live in that neighbourhood and the chances that you end there on a stroll through Rotterdam are slim, but they had. </p> <p>What are the chances of pointing out two old acquaintances, one of me and one of my wife, at exactly that spot without having it planned? Could you even plan and organise such an occurrence? </p> <p>Jan Dullemond<br />