An Italian coastal spot known as “Lovers’ Arch” because of its popularity with courting couples collapsed during heavy storms.
When did this happen?
Three days ago, on Valentine’s Day.
Of course.
A rock formation that had lasted thousands of years and come to represent love to couples around the world collapsed on the day dedicated to love.
The chances of this Lover’s Arch collapsing on Valentine’s Day versus any other day in the year are about two-tenths of a percent.
Why did it collapse on this day of all days?
Coincidence, which serves as the basis of the faith that I founded five years ago:
Coincidentalism.
Members of the faith (currently seven in number) acknowledge and celebrate the remarkable nature of coincidences while firmly rejecting the notion that a higher power is manipulating events to make them happen.
Coincidentalists embrace the extraordinary nature of coincidences while viewing them as the rather ordinary outcomes of an unfathomably vast system of components and endless interactions.
Our belief can be boiled down to:
Coincidences are amazing! Also expected! Because math!
Most “mathematically impossible” coincidences aren’t.
They feel impossible because:
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We notice the hits, ignore the misses.
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Billions of people create billions of statistical trials.
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Extremely unlikely events become inevitable as sample sizes explode.
It’s the law of truly large numbers:
With enough opportunities, highly improbable events become practically guaranteed.
As Coincidentalists, we seek not to find meaning in coincidences but merely celerate them for their wonder.
Like the fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day — July 4, 1826.
Or that famous actor Edwin Booth, son of James Wilkes Booth, saved the life of Robert Todd Lincoln. President Lincoln’s eldest son was at a crowded train station in Jersey City, New Jersey, when he slipped into the space between the platform and a moving train, but was pulled to safety by Booth. Neither man knew the other was in the station at the time, and Booth did not realize he was rescuing Lincoln until after the fact.
The son of the assassin saved the life of the assassinated.
My favorite coincidence was told on the WYNC podcast Radiolab. In 2001, a 10-year-old girl named Laura Buxton released a red balloon from the front yard of her home. On the side of the balloon, she wrote, “Please return to Laura Buxton,” along with her address.
The balloon traveled roughly 140 miles south before descending and finally landed in the yard of another 10-year-old girl.
The second girl’s name?
Also Laura Buxton.
After getting in touch and explaining the coincidence, the girls decided to meet and discovered a range of uncanny similarities. Not only did they look and dress alike, but both girls had three-year-old chocolate labs, a grey rabbit, and a guinea pig, and both had brought their guinea pigs to the meeting unplanned.
Coincidentalism at its best!
Please note:
Coincidentalism does not prevent someone from also believing in a higher power. It does not reject the possibility of God or some similarly spiritual (and perhaps less violent and self-obsessed) being. Both belief systems are perfectly capable of operating independently of each other.
God exists. Also, coincidences happen.
I still want to believe in a higher power. I still want to find faith in the afterlife. I still cannot, but if I someday find the faith I so desperately desire, I will continue to celebrate coincidences for what they are:
The remarkable results of a cosmic pinball machine constantly bouncing everything off everything else, resulting in moments of extraordinarily frequent unlikeliness.
Coincidentalism:
An explanation for the collapse of the Lover’s Arch on Valentine’s Day. With an immeasurable number of events taking place on the planet on any given day, coincidences are bound to happen, and while extraordinary, they are also simply the result of the mathematical probability of things like this happening.
Plenty of room if you’d like to join the congregation.
