I was standing in the tee box of the eighth hole at Tunxis Country – the green course – in Farmington, CT. It was a beautiful summer morning of golf with my friends, Tom and Rob. As we waited for the group ahead of us to clear the green, I took out my phone for the first time in the round to check on the world.
A second later, I groaned.
Tom asked what was wrong, and I explained that my inbox had been flooded with contracts to sign via DocuSign. Admittedly, signing a contract online isn’t difficult, but clients had been flooding me all week with contracts, non-disclosures, and the like, and I was sick of seeing DocuSign emails in my inbox.
“But at least I own shares in DocuSign,” I said. “Every time I sign one of these damn things, I feel like I’m making money.”
Rob laughed.
Three holes later, Tom sliced his tee shot right and into the trees. As I went left in the direction of my ball, Tom went right to search for his ball. A few minutes later, we were both putting to finish the hole.
As we walked off the green and headed to the twelfth hole, Tom walked over to me and said, “You’re not going to believe this. When I was looking for my ball, I found this.”
He held out his hand to show me a golf ball, stamped with DocuSign.
At time point in the past, DocuSign, a San Fransisco-based company with no offices in Connecticut, hosted a golf tournament for its employees or customers and stamped balls to commemorate the occasion. Someone in that tournament placed a ball in their bag, and at some point in the future, played a round of golf at Tunxis Country Club. On the eleventh hole, they, too, sliced a tee shot into the woods and could not find the ball, leaving it behind amidst the trees and leaves.
Days, weeks, months, or years later, I had a conversation about DocuSign with my friends while standing in a tee box. Three holes later, Tom hit his ball to the same spot in the woods as that unknown golfer somewhere in the past and found the ball.
I am not a religious person. I describe myself as a reluctant atheist who wishes he could believe in a higher power. Not the monster described in the Old Testament of the Bible, of course, but perhaps some more benevolent, all-knowing being, along with a blissful afterlife filled with cheeseburgers, books, and the New England Patriots.
In moments like these, when the coincidence seems too improbable to believe, three things always happen to me:
- I wonder if this is a sign from God. Is a higher power trying to speak to me through this golf ball? Then I become annoyed because Moses got a burning bush and a set of tablets. Noah received the most improbable weather forecast of all time, then it came true. God was speaking to the figures in the Bible all the time. Appearing before them in corporeal form. All God offers me is a DocuSign golf ball?
- We are living in a computer simulation, which is far more likely – even probable – than you probably realize, and moments like these are obvious glitches in the code, representing proof that we are digital and not organic. In these moments, I always assure our programming overlords that it’s fine. No need to delete me. I’m happy to exist in any way that I can.
- This is another opportunity to celebrate my own religion, established three years ago and currently consisting of four members. It’s called Coincidentalism. It’s a religion founded on the belief that coincidences are extraordinary, astounding, and seemingly impossible, yet they happen all the time and are incredible, beautiful, and worthy of celebration and awe. But they are also simply coincidences. Not signs from a higher power.
All three of these thoughts passed through me as I asked Tom if I could keep the ball. He somewhat reluctantly handed it over, knowing full well about the internal turmoil that these moments cause me.
I’ve been thinking about that damn ball ever since. More than you would probably believe.
In honor of this astounding coincidence, I decided to commemorate the occasion, as both a memorial of the moment and a reminder that the world is a wondrous and mysterious place.
It shall sit on my shelf for all time.
Or until some astounding coincidence upends its position in some unforeseen and glorious way.
