This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Some coincidences feel a little too perfect to be random. You think about someone you haven’t spoken with in years, and they text you that afternoon. You run into an old friend while traveling in a city neither of you lives in. You learn an unfamiliar word then suddenly seem to encounter it everywhere.
Moments like these can feel as though the universe is trying to tell you something. But in a 2016 Atlantic article, Julie Beck explored a less mystical explanation: Coincidences may reveal more about the way our minds work than they do about some hidden order of the world. Statistically, unlikely things happen all the time. Our lives contain so many people, places, conversations, and decisions that there are countless opportunities for strange overlaps to occur. Perhaps what makes a coincidence remarkable, then, is not that it happened but that we noticed it. As a statistician told Beck, a surprising connection might exist without our ever discovering it. In that sense, the special part of a coincidence, in many cases, is our attention to it.
Our brains are built to look for these kinds of instances, but knowing this doesn’t necessarily make coincidences less delightful. Maybe we don’t need to decide whether a strange encounter was fate or mere chance. A coincidence can simply remind us how many connections are possible in a life, and how much depends on what we notice.
On Coincidences
Coincidences and the Meaning of Life
By Julie Beck
The surprising chances of our lives can seem like they’re hinting at hidden truths, but they’re really revealing the human mind at work. (From 2016)
What Were My Dreams Trying to Tell Me?
By Ayad Akhtar
To make sense of my deepest experiences, I needed a new way of talking about the soul.
The Meaning of Life Is Surprisingly Simple
By Arthur C. Brooks
You can make your quest for meaning manageable by breaking it down into three bite-size dimensions. (From 2021)
Still Curious?
- The missing ingredient of modern life: Ian Bogost on why we need wonder
- Three paths toward the meaning of life: “Who in the world am I?” asks Alice in Wonderland. It turns out that business school has a useful theory to help you answer that, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2023.
Other Diversions
- Taylor Swift’s audience is growing up. Her music is devolving.
- Why Americans stopped throwing dinner parties
- Manipulator vs. manipulator
PS
My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “On Mother’s Day 2021, while on my daily walk, I came across this peafowl, which displayed its feathers. I took this image with my phone and texted it to the moms in my life,” Hal Y., from Palos Verdes Estates, California, wrote.
We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Rafaela