Coincidence Theory

Last night I dreamt about something that has been happening frequently to me recently. The USB drive that I have is connected through a key ring to a carabiner that I use to fasten to a belt loop. I then drop the USB drive into my pocket. Lately, the piece of the USB drive that attaches to the key ring has been loosening and detaching from the casing of the drive. Well, in my dream, I was placing the drive in my pocket when it came loose, fell to the floor, and then into an air register on the floor. It fell between the slats and down into the vent. I tried to reach in to retrieve it, but it slipped again, further out of my grasp. I was a bit distraught in my dream, thinking I would need to replace it and hoping that nothing happened to my main data store with my backups now down a vent. But then things changed and I thought nothing more of it, occupied instead by further dreams of suicide and whore houses.

Today, I was in my car getting ready to head out. I grabbed a piece of gum, needing a chew. I dropped the gum, it slid down my pant leg and fell between the engaged emergency brake and the guard placed there to keep gunk out, far out of reach in the works of my car. That's not terribly exciting on its own merit, yet after the dream with a similar theme, it seemed a bit bizarre.

Now, I'd like to describe what I call coincidence theory. This is a simple and silly example, but some people might take the event in my dream as some sort of premonition as to the event of the day. Had the suicide I dreamt of actually taken place, it might have been harder to dismiss the event as coincidence. However, I believe when people see two related ideas manifest themselves in their lives, they will often attribute this to some kind of divine purpose or karmic imperative, rather than the more likely of candidates: coincidence.

Sometime coincidences seem to compound leading to further complication. To explain this sort of preponderance of coincidence, I submit to you that among that myriad events taking place in you, at you, and around you; sometimes you're going to get a collision and concepts or ideas are going to mesh. If you think, however, of how many things you see in a day that do not correlate in any way with anything in any significant manner, it makes these other occurrences seem less special.

I was contemplating posting about this concept last week, but could not think of any good example from my life other than a song that sang the words I was writing shortly after scribing them down. I couldn't remember the words or the song, so I felt the example lost some of its power. In truth, I probably subconsciously knew the words coming up and used this to supply my conscious mind the words to write, which coincidentally fit what I was writing. But the real meta-coincidence here is that I was just thinking about posting the idea when an example hit me fairly hard. Yet, if you're thinking about coincidence and looking for coincidence, what are the odds that something somewhere is going to relate?

Yet for all this, there is one important event in my life that could be and should be ascribed to coincidence, but I cannot help but feel that something else may have manifested itself in my life other than random chance. It was probably the Tao.

Trapped in my Mind

Did I leave the TV on? I'm asleep and I can't move. I'm asleep and I can't awake. I'm paralyzed with dread and then fear. Is that someone in the hall or at the door? What are they doing here? Is it a burglar or thug? Is that something in the room; something not quite human. An alien terror unknown in the waking world, only existing in the back of my mind, waiting on these moments to feed. Why can't I move? What's wrong?

I can feel it slither around and over me, holding down an already paralyzed figure. My heart accelerates. Move, dammit! I can feel a breath from the terror, breathing down my paralyzed mirror-self. My mind reels in a torrent of reality and unreality colliding violently. I can't distinguish the two. I'm not so unconscious as to be unaware of reality, yet not so conscious to recognize that existing only in my mind.

Concentrate! Try to move. Wake up. My arm twitches. My heart speeds up further. Focusing as deeply as I can in this state, I force my arm to move. My unconscious self dies and I awake, confused, sweating, and heart pounding. I get up, exceedingly disturbed. Was that real? No. What's that noise? How come I'm still lying down if I just got up? Why can't I move?

The Ineffable Expression of Human Terror

Deep within the human soul lies a monster. It waits, sleeping like a dog waiting on his master to return. It passes from generation to generation, inherited as eyes, height, or hair color. What unimaginable horror created this monster in our ancient progenitor has been lost to the callous march of time. Long before humans could write or speak, the monster waited. Sometimes it rouses in the night, when we sleep or dream or awaken to hear a strange noise. But still it sleeps.

In the average day, no one sees it, thinks of it, or even acknowledges its presence. It only creeps out of our unconscious when it's hungry or when it senses opportunity. Walking down the street, it doesn't stir. Passing the park, it avoids daylight. At the end of a desolate, unknown alleyway it waits. This sense of what might lie at the end of this dark, creeping alley is the monster's name. Understand; it is not what is actually at the end of the alleyway. It is what might be at the end of the alleyway; the unknown.

Everyone has their own monster. It is what ties us closer than any other feature. We all share the same monster. Despite our distinctions and differences, we are the same when we are afraid or abandoned - when we become that child trapped alone in the dark with no one to answer our screams of terror. When we silently go mad, the monster begins to play. The dog, whose master has returned eagerly runs to fetch whatever was tossed: our peace, our joy, our sanity.

In the end we all succumb to the monster. It doesn't kill us, but it defeats us. We yield to it, and it takes over. In the very end, we do die, and the monster abides in our descendants, sleeping; waiting to devour them.

All these words are not the monster's true name. It is inscrutable, ineffable.

Recursion Paradox

An alarm buzzer sounds. A weary and reticent hand reached out from under the covers to silence it. Bob felt old. He was only thirty today, but turning an age divisible by ten is a milestone that always plays tricks on your mind to make it think its body spontaneously aged by ten years all on its birthday.

Bob was about to be given the most amazing gift for his thirtieth birthday; a gift from God or Fate or the Way or something else entirely. As he headed into the bathroom, he didn't notice that the sink was already full. He flicked the light switch which immediately blew all three bulbs in the bathroom. The odds of this, thought Bob, were astronomical. The brief flash left an iridescent glow playing on the surface of the substance in the sink. Bob noticed it now. The odds of what Bob was about to see were more than astronomical.

Bob leaned over the sink and into a window into another world. As he closed in he could make out figures moving about on the other side of the portal. Through this vision Bob saw himself, his family, his children and his grandchildren to come. It was beautiful; magnificent. They were all smiling, happy. All his insecurities about the future melted away; his worries, fears, and dread evaporated in an instant. He knew that what he was seeing was real.

This vision gave Bob an inner peace he had always dreamt of. Soon, he didn't worry about anything. He didn't worry at work when he lost that big sale to the new client. He didn't even mind when they fired him for it. He knew everything would work out. He didn't even bother looking for a job because he knew the right one would find him and one day he would live the life he saw on his thirtieth birthday. When he couldn't pay the bills anymore, his wife left him and took the children with her.

He was sure that they would come back, because he already knew what his future held. Eventually he had nothing left. Bob stopped living his life to dream about what could have been. He watches his vision of his wonderful life over and over again in his head. When he finally snaps out of this loop, he sees the horror that he has let his life become. Unmaintained, alone, and miserable, Bob ends his life.

Appalled, Bob stepped back from the sink. The vision within the vision left him scarred. Driven to madness by what he saw, he clutched too tightly to all that he held in life. Constantly worried, always afraid, Bob never enjoyed a minute's peace even in the best of moments in life. His children have birthdays and graduations, weddings and children, but he's too scared to lose it all to just live in the moment. Bob dies of a heart attack at fifty.

There were many questions and uncertainties all through Bob's life, that when taken for granted could amass destruction or when overly tended cause needless fret and heartache. He was given a gift to see some of the answers to these questions, but the greatest question of Bob's life was this, "When will he step away from the sink?"