HOW COINCIDENTAL ARE COINCIDENCES?

The human life isn’t smooth; it is a role-play of several emotions and phases. Throughout this journey of our breaths, we come across several characters or incidents that we had been considering unrelated to each other. However, this causal appearing connection ‘isn’t just a coincidence’, quite literally, and signifies a deep unsaid voice which many a times, we miss to hear.

First things first, before talking about ‘this’ voice, let’s focus on what coincidence is. The basic dictionary definition of coincidence says that it’s a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent casual connection with one another. Thus, it applies that coincidence defines the relationships among unrelated things. But what if the things we find unrelated at first simultaneously be somehow related, maybe in another setting or perhaps some later?

One may think that it’s just a coincidence that they would wear the shirt of the same colour as their boss and colleagues in the office for subsequent three days, or it’s just an extreme incident that perhaps their co-passenger in the train turns out to be their namesake, or even if the person they find randomly on the first day of their university life, ‘coincidently’ later turns out to be the person you fall in love with. For once it might look that all the mentioned coincidences are just strange, once in a lifetime incidents. But if we look deeper, we may certainly find that they are connected. Likewise, what would be the bigger coincidence that among the billion-trillion believed stars in the entire universe, the life shreds of evidence are known on just our tiny Earth? A thought which has been passing through ages is that everything is connected to one-other, meaning that everyone shares an unsaid relation. We are certainly a large family of 760 crore humans and millions of plants and animals who are current residents of this planet Earth, we have something in common regarding how we all inhale the same air, are born in the same period, on the same greenish patch of this mostly bluish planet which itself ages millions of years.

If coincidence is believed to be a special event, then there must be a strong reason regarding why each and everyone faces it, making it much more common or generalised event. Even the mathematical principles and theorems seem jumbled in the sciences concerning coincidences. The famous statistical ‘Birthday Problem’ which has been attributed to English mathematician Harold Davenport (or perhaps with another Austrian Jewish scholar Richard von Mises who is believed to present this theory even before). According to this claim, the coincidences to be paradoxical have even shown that the probability of two persons having the same birthday already exceeds 50% in a group of only 23 persons.

So why do these coincidences happen? The scientists and researchers have given theories and proved several of each other’s postulates wrong regarding it, but we aren’t indulging in it. We intend to focus on a natural and much larger reason. It may happen that through the coincidences nature is trying to tell you something, perhaps want to tell that you intend to have any relation with the stranger who was the part of this coincidence or maybe it may signal you to reflect that you are the member of the big universal family, or it would even happen that it reflects none of them and is simply reflective that some things are bigger and wider than human’s imagination, a world lies beyond the thinking capacity which many couldn’t have got hold of till now, maybe ‘coincidentally’.

Aashish Kochhar is a student pursuing History from Jamia Millia Islamia.

Edited by: Varda Ahmad

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.