I’ve had some very cool coincidences happen to me in my life time. Two in particular come to mind.
The first one was when I ran into a colleague, who I had met in Dallas, in downtown Los Angeles. He was a drummer and he had been working in LA for a few weeks on a project. We chatted a bit but we were both in a hurry so we literally said, ‘well I’m sure I’ll run into you again’. Well, we did run into each other again, the very next day, in downtown Toronto. Neither of us had said we were traveling to Toronto that night, so it was quite the surprise to see each other again so soon, 3,500 kms away. What are the chances of that happening? I can’t say there was a reason for our chance encounters with each other, or that anything significant happened as a result of them, but it’s a story I’ll remember for the rest of my life and it has an inherent magic about it.
The second happened when we moved the studio to its current location. Across the street from us is what I’d call a rooming house, ‘rent a room, cheap’ and it generally attracts people in transition. When we moved into the neighbourhood the rooming house was just being built and it was a quiet neighbourhood when we bought here. That changed drastically when the rooming house was finished. The first of the tenants moved in about 6 months from our move date and one of them literally moved his mess of a life onto our street. He rented a room and proceeded to move an entire house and property of belongings onto the lawn of the rooming house. Cars, trailers, heaps and heaps of stuff. He also moved his bad relationships onto our street and every night there were fights, people peeing on our lawn etc. To keep it short (and my blood pressure down) suffice it to say it was a BIG deal, and this guy became our worst nightmare.
In Toronto, there is a 12-16 lane highway that runs through the middle of the city called the 401. One day I’m driving along the 401 nowhere near my house and this little red beat up car comes across several lanes of traffic and cuts me off in a way that it looked like the driver was purposely trying to kill me. It was so direct and dangerous it was like something out of a movie. I remembered the car and the driver distinctly because it was such an alarming event. Young, blond, red & rusty old Datsun spewing out smoke from the tail pipe. After I got over the initial shock of the event, I was fuming at the irresponsibility of the driver who very nearly killed me and several others. No one stopped, an accident had been averted.
A couple of days later I hear a car pull up outside. I look across the street to this rooming house and it’s THAT RED CAR – THAT DRIVER visiting the guy in the rooming house (at this point he’s being referred to as ‘crazy guy’ by everyone in the neighbourhood). It turns out it is his daughter. How weird is that? This guy who at the time was the bane of my existence, has a daughter who nearly kills me on a highway in a completely unrelated incident nowhere near my home.
I did get a good dream out of the second incident which helped to reconcile the anger I was feeling for these people (he eventually did move and hopefully got his life together although that was a pretty steep hill to climb).
In my dream, I was driving along the 401, the car came across several lanes and cut me off, in the same way it happened in real life. But in my dream, I couldn’t avoid the fatal accident and it all happened so quickly. Bang, I flew through the windshield. But instead of coming crashing to the ground in a bloody heap, I kept flying, unhurt, and I flew into the beautiful sky like a bird and was free.
I can’t explain coincidence. It’s not the same as everything happening for a reason, these are just little magical moments that allow us to reflect on the mysterious for a while.
Wishing you a magical week. In whatever part of the universe you inhabit, spread peace through your sphere of influence.