NOVEMBER 27, SUNDAY

CHANCE

A second article in the Atlantic is about coincidences and chance and how we respond to it. One way to understand the universe and our place in it is that the universe is a result of an incomprehensible Big Bang in which a pin point of an explosion resulted in our universe with its billions of stars (or perhaps many universes at the same time) through totally random chance combinations of atoms which finally resulted in animal life of which we are a part. Evolution from this perspective is simply a result of random chance and very gradual change.

And it could be that this random chance resulted in human beings whose awareness of their environment turned into seeing patterns everywhere and making sense of the patterns. We are almost driven to give the random world we live in a pattern that makes sense to us. We can project a life force that is within us out so that we see a pattern of a creator God who is responsible for creating the universe as it is and who gives it meaning, gives us meaning and purpose.

But the article is really about how we deal individually with chance. On one end of the continuum for some people everything is chance and has only the meaning that we give it. But on the other end of the continuum many of us see purpose and meaning in even the most random events such as coincidences or near misses, seeing meaning or purpose in these things.

When I play the lottery I have a set of numbers, the birthdays of my family, that I feel are lucky numbers. Once I was in Germany for a week and played the Lotto there with those number and won $4000. They certainly are my lucky numbers. I’ve played them again and again since then and once won $3 while losing untold amounts of money. I know, rationally, that I have no chance to win at Powerball and that my lucky numbers have no more chance of winning than anyone else’s set of numbers. I know it is a waste of money to play. I know that I am being unreasonable. At the most what I get is a chance to dream for a few days. But I won’t accept chance. I think I continue to feel deep down that the universe cares about me and that through my willing it, the universe will let me win. I like being the center of the universe and more deserving than anyone else. So I go on playing.

On this last trip to Morocco, in Fez, we walked by an open door and saw people sitting in a beautiful hotel lobby and stepped in and after a brief discussion discovered that a man sitting there had attended Warren Wilson College for a year in the 70’s when I was first teaching there. I knew all of the people of whom he had fond memories. It was the wildest of coincidences. To me it was pure chance, but to others there would have been some significance here. And those people are the people who are open to coincidences and see a meaning and a purpose behind them. God’s will is often given as a reason and even in chance traumatic events they see God’s hand and God’s purpose. From this perspective everything that happens, happens for a reason, which may not be apparent but is for us to figure out.

I have other personal examples of chance coincident such as when my parents took a week earlier flight back to the USA from India and then prepared to board their original flight in Geneva only to learn that it had crashed in Cairo, killing everyone. Or when Susie narrowly missed being on the Pan AM flight from Munich to the United States that was brought down by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland. Was something sparing my family or was it random chance.

But of course I don’t know of the probably many near meetings or near accidents that I had no awareness of or of all the times that some power may have been protecting me.

We are certainly meaning creating, pattern finding, animals. Do we live within a bubble of human created meaning, including our gods, or do we live in a universe that is random chance with no built in meaning or purpose? Fundamentalists stake their identity on a universe centered on their particular God and their particular values and that is probably a lot more satisfying than living in an absurd universe of random chance.

Maybe some people are internally inclined to be sure of meaning while others, guided by inner inclination, see only random chance. And maybe most of us are inclined to take it as it comes and not even give chance a thought as we play out our days.