Coincidence or destiny?
Of course, the three-day trip to Berlin could have gone as planned, and Charlotte Meyn * (name changed) would have completed the usual tourist program: Museum Island, shopping, pubs, theater. But then coincidence sparked off, and in the end she should have solved a long-suppressed family secret - and all because of a street sign.
It's sunny late summer days and Charlotte is looking forward to Berlin. She drives to Reinhard, her friend; he is an actor and is currently guesting here. Since he has evening performances, the days remain for them to undertake, and so they drift, through avenues and cafes, chatting, laughing. On the third afternoon they pass the road sign. Kaiser street. At Charlotte, click. Kaiserstraße 17 a, she used to write cards at this address, she knows for sure now. Only, who lived there, grandparents, great aunt?
As if you have taken her a blindfold, the memories are suddenly bubbling. The snow-white hair of the grandfather, the green silk dress of the grandmother, and as from afar she hears father and grandfather quarrel again. Loud, unforgiving, angry - until the big bang. End of family relationships.
Everyone can tell random stories
She gets scared. How old was she then? Ten, twelve? And may it be that for decades she completely forgot the family drama, the destructive argument over the grandfather's company, which the only son, Charlotte's father, did not want to take on then? 17 a. She has to go to the house. On the shield the familiar name. She rings, a woman of about 60 appears. Charlotte can not say anything, only when the woman tries to shut the door she stutters: "I'm ... Charlotte." Then everything happens very fast. The woman introduces herself as Anna, a cousin of Charlotte's late father. But the biggest surprise: Anna's mother, Charlotte's great aunt - she's still alive. She is 92 years old. Charlotte can hardly believe it: She sits with her grandmother's sister and holds her hand! And the longer she looks, the more she sees in the features of the old lady the similarity to her grandmother. Déjà-vu.
Who speaks of chance, comes to storytelling. Stories like these that amaze, astonish, make us cry or laugh. And to convey to us that in chance there is sometimes a hidden meaning. Not blind, as he is often called - no, clever and clear-sighted, chance had acted here. A woman finds her family roots and can reconcile with a completely repressed childhood trauma. Coincidence?
To assure our identity, we need to feel that our lives make sense. That is why we also look for the red thread in random events, relativizes Stefan Klein. The author of the book "All Random" has collected many such stories in it. Beautiful as that of the taxi driver Barry Bagshaw, who lost contact with his wife and son after the divorce, changed countries and cities - and met the son after thirty years, when the passenger climbs in his taxi.
Or even oppressive, shattering as that of Felix Sanchez: The financial adviser escaped the attack on the World Trade Center, because he had vacated his office at the investment bank Merrill Lynch on 10 September. Sanchez had quit to become self-employed. That saved his life - for two months: On 12 November 2001, he died in the crash of American Airlines 587 in New York's Queens district. Coincidence? Or fate, predestination, divine decision? Quite in the spirit of Anatole France, who once said cunningly: "coincidence is the pseudonym of God, if he does not want to sign himself"?
Random versus statistics
Stefan Klein is a physicist and does not believe in God. Rather to the statistics: That someone meets a man after decades again, with six billion Earth dwellers and in view of the global network, even possible. According to Klein, the sad end of Felix Sanchez can also be explained statistically: "On September 11, 40,000 people stopped at the World Trade Center, and the likelihood that none of them would sit in the November 12 thunderstorm went to zero . "
But is that enough as an explanation? For the fact that the old girlfriend, long since forgotten, calls the moment we think about her. For a mother breaking out in tears at breakfast - and later learning that her daughter had a traffic accident in America at that very time? That there may be telepathy between people is one thing. But often comes a second or third dimension into play: The inner movement of the soul is reflected in the real world or vice versa.Who does not know the stories of the soldiers' wives in the war, who saw their husband's photo fall off the wall, or a mirror shattered into a thousand pieces when he fell at the front or was wounded? The story of the woman who lost her wedding ring while bathing - and finds him on the same beach ten years later? What exactly comes together? Why does matter react to mental processes, and who or what did Charlotte dreamily lead to her great aunt after twenty years?
As long as we are young, we believe that we have our own lives in our own hands. The choice of partner, occupation, place of residence, car. But as you grow older, skepticism grows. More and more often we feel that there are things between heaven and earth that can not be explained with the mind alone. Looking back, we ask ourselves: Why is this or that happened, why me? Less and less we like to believe in the random coincidence.
Especially the concatenation of coincidences is interpreted as a key experience. That I met my great love just because my subway failed and I took the bus; that I won the lottery because, out of a spontaneous mood, I played for once - coincidence? More and more often we now recognize what we can not influence or undo: wrong decisions, defeats, illness, death. A tick bite can completely change the life of a family. One thing is certain: coincidence thwarts plans, interferes with our lives, gives it a turn, brings bad luck or even death. But if we are lucky, he also opens up unique opportunities. As Stefan Klein put it: "Using coincidences often means being given an unexpected gift."
Coincidences are not only amazing in everyday life. In the natural sciences, especially in physics and quantum mechanics, they also play a major role. No wonder that science has long been trying to decipher the secret of chance. Series of studies were held at the universities of Princeton, Gießen and at the Freiburg Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health.
In experiments in the lab, one wanted to find out if there is a demonstrable influence of the psyche or the mental will on matter. In addition subjects sat in front of a screen, which showed a computer animated random pattern. The message was: You should want the pattern to move up or down. Which even occurred - only, a generally valid rule could never be derived from it. As if chance were to remain what it is and was: unpredictable.
Chance meets us at turning points in life
The psychotherapist Elisabeth Mardorf offers an interesting interpretation and also an instruction manual for coincidences. She calls experiences like those of Charlotte "synchronistic." The term goes back to Carl Gustav Jung (1875 - 1961): meaningful coincidence - meaningful coincidence. Young, contemporary and competitor of Sigmund Freud, was the first to study the seemingly magical powers of chance, along with physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Both were convinced that there are coincidences in life that can play destiny.
And Elisabeth Mardorf confirms this in her book "It can not be a coincidence!". Some events, such as their experience - such as an unexpected (re) encounter or even the conspicuous accumulation of names, numbers, topics - are related to the currently important life issues of those who happen to them. They are a kind of mirror of the soul: "As strange as it sounds, it is so true: Synchronistic coincidences meet us frequently at turning points in life, in death, separation, marriage, birth."
How to explain that? "You then go through the world differently, with sharpened senses, perceive more intensively." In the emotional energy that a person develops in an archetypal situation, such as death or separation, presumably has a power that can affect the outside world and trigger amazing coincidences. And therefore, as the psychotherapist advises, one should look very carefully at a coincidence, and above all pay attention to one's own feelings and thoughts: "The meaning of a coincidence lies solely in the meaning we give it at this moment."
Their conclusion: We should strive to consciously perceive coincidences in which we somehow sit up and take notice. To relate them to us, our past, present, future, our desires and plans. Then we could decode and use their message for our current situation.
Like Charlotte Meyn. "Since Berlin, I pay more attention to coincidences," she says, "and often one thing fits the other, both small and large." Once she wanted to thank a new colleague for a tip. When she showed up with her gift in the office, the woman looked at her in disbelief: "That's crazy, today is my birthday!" But she also had to cope with a tragic experience: the man of a friend had collapsed while jogging and died. It turned out that an undetected heart failure was the cause. Months later, the widow found in his documents a picture that the man had painted: he ran through the clouds into the sky.
Destiny and intuition have much in common
In any case, such examples suggest, coincidences have to do with intuition, the seventh sense, with hunches, dreams, self-fulfilling prophecy-in short, with our unconscious. Those who have known this for a long time are the poets. Charlotte's friend Ragna, a writer, discovered a mighty bird of prey in the tree outside her window, which otherwise never gets lost in cities. The main character of her new novel: an ornithologist.
An almost manic lover of chance is also American bestselling author Paul Auster, who often lets his heroes follow mystical paths and signs whose hidden meaning is suddenly revealed. In the early autobiographical book "The Invention of Loneliness" he says: "During the war, Ms father had been hiding from the Nazis for several months in a Parisian chambre de bonne, finally escaping to America where he started a new life More than twenty years passed, M. was born, grew up and went to study in Paris, where he spent some difficult weeks finding a place to live in. Just as he desperately wanted to give up, he found a place to stay He told his father in a letter the good news, and about a week later he got an answer.Your address, Ms father wrote, signifies the same building I was hiding in during the war, and then he described the room in It turned out that the son had just rented this room. " Paul Auster, the writer, swears the story is true.
