Meaningful Coincidences

Think Tank #9

There’s more to life than what meets the eye.

I like to start these posts off with a question, but this is not a question—I know this.

Yesterday I was in the bathroom at work, and had to put my bag down on the floor because there was nowhere else to put it. As I dropped it in the corner of the room, I thought to myself, I don’t want to put my bag down here. I’ve seen roaches in this bathroom. This immediately made me think, oh great, now that I said that, I’m gonna see a roach.

It’s a fairly common superstition, the idea of ‘jinxing’ things. And it’s one that I hold dearly.

I always say that my mom ‘conjures snakes,’ because she’s terrified of snakes, and whenever she’s in the woods, she sees one.

“It’s because you’re thinking about snakes the whole time you’re there,” I always tell her. And it’s true. For the longest time, every time I saw a snake in the woods, it was with my mom.

I broke this streak on my last hike. It had rained the day before, so the trail was muddy and a little gross. I thought about my mom and her ability to ‘conjure snakes,’ and thought, maybe today will be the day I see a snake on a hike. Then I thought, oh great, now that I said that, I’m gonna see a snake.

Fast-forward about two hours. There’s about fifteen minutes left to the hike. Suddenly, we come across something—right in the middle of the path, body sprawled out across the majority of the walking space, there’s a two-foot-long, skinny little snake. He was alert; his head was raised, looking straight at us. He didn’t move, just looked. I’d conjured my first snake.

Anyway, back to the roach story.

After being on roach-alert, not taking my eyes off my bag throughout my entire bathroom trip, I forgot all about it. Then, about twenty minutes passed, and it was time for my first class (I’m a teacher, by the way). So, I went down the stairs, and at the bottom of the staircase, I passsed these two kids who were hanging out there. I didn’t think much of it. All of a sudden, as I was about to leave the scene completely, I heard one of the kids say, “Ew, it’s moving!”

I turned around to see what they were looking at. It was a roach, right in the middle of one of the steps doing acrobatics. Well, not really acrobatics, obviously. But it seemed to be bouncing up and down, right in the center of the step.

I’d seen a roach, after all—not only seen one, but barely evaded stepping on it.

Now, it’s not like roaches are a daily occurrence. The place isn’t infested. I see maybe one every month. Could it have been a coincidence? Sure.

Was the snake there because it was a muddy day and the ground was wet? Sure.

Now, I’m sure skeptics will chalk it up to ‘confirmation bias’—I’d seen a lot of roaches (and even snakes) in my life that I didn’t think were particularly remarkable, and the reason why I was paying so close attention to them was because I had primed my brain to expect them. This might be true.

But we’re so small, so insignificant, in the grand scheme of things. I don’t know, it just seems more likely that the two are connected, that either my thought drew the snake/roach towards me or the snake/roach somehow prompted the thought.

The idea that everything is random and the idea that everything is connected are equally unfalsifiable. In fact, I’d argue that the latter has more evidence going for it than the former.

Plus, there was something weird about that roach.

And that snake.