People say: this is why I no longer believe in coincidence

I feel like I have always been quite down-to-earth and can think very black-and-white. It's a bit in me to look for rational explanations for inexplicable events. Add to that my real fascination for these kinds of inexplicable things, and I often end up in a rabbit hole. Not that I spend hours reading about the Bermuda Triangle (because honestly: there isn't much mysterious about that) or that I believe in strange theories that say Amelia Earhart is still alive (I don't think so), no, I actually find the personal stories much more interesting.

Someone who, for example, had such a strong premonition that his/her parents shouldn't go away in the car. They did anyway and got into a serious accident. Grim, I know, but you often hear that people saw these kinds of things coming in a certain way. But can that actually be?

In any case, it doesn't always have to be grim, you know. Some things seem like coincidence, but a number of times people find themselves thinking: I can't just dismiss this as coincidence, can I? And for examples like these, Reddit is of course the place to be. Like in this AskReddit subtopic, where the question was asked: ‘What was the biggest coincidence that made you question the fabric of reality?’ I can already tell you: there are quite a few bizarre things in there.

‘There was a boy I went to high school with. I wasn't friends with him; he was at most an acquaintance. Over the last fifteen years, I have run into him in five locations around the world. In Disney World when I was still a child, a beach bar in Thailand, The Bean (a piece of art) in Chicago, a pub in Budapest, and a library in San Jose, Costa Rica. We have since become friends through our shared love of travel, but neither of us posts anything on social media or keeps each other updated on where we are going. We have never talked outside of our chance encounters. When I see him now, it feels like a higher power wants us to go have a beer together, haha.’

‘I crossed the street and had the strangest, strongest feeling that I would break my ankle, so I carefully avoided a car coming my way. That evening I picked up my Thai food, tripped on a tiny step when leaving the restaurant, and shattered my ankle so badly that I needed surgery and now, after a year, I am still not fully recovered.’

‘A few years ago, my boyfriend and I were on a road trip and we needed a place to stay overnight. We told each other that we had a friend in the city we were currently in, so we thought about staying with one of them. It turned out that those two friends were each other's housemates and had also told each other that a friend of theirs would be visiting soon.’

‘A few years ago, I was with some friends at a coffee shop and one of them had his iPad with him. Another friend wanted to unlock the iPad and asked what the four-digit code was. I wanted to be funny and shouted four random numbers at him as if I knew, and that was actually the code. I had never used that iPad or the combination of those numbers for anything else.’

‘I called my mother while I was on the subway, but accidentally mixed up two digits. The person I was calling was on the same subway and in the same car.’

‘Look up the Jim Twins, a pair of twins who were both given up for adoption at birth and were therefore separated. They coincidentally received the same name from their adoptive parents, went to the same beaches on vacation, married women with the same name, divorced them, and their second wives had the same name with just one letter difference. Both worked as volunteers for the police, both had carpentry as a hobby, smoked the same kind of cigarettes, and drank the same kind of beer.’