David Empey

I was out for a short hike with a friend on the weekend and experienced a couple of interesting coincidences.

The first of these was about a folk artist named David Francey whose name arose when the friend mentioned that he'd like to take a trip on lake freighter. I mentioned a musician - Francey - who has done just that. A few minutes later, an email arrived on my Blackberry (yes, I took it hiking, very silly of me) from none other than David Francey's wife (who sends updates about concert dates and the like to a mailing list you can sign up for on his website).

Not long later, our conversation turned to the nature of the universe. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, my friend and I need to get a life. In any event, this conversation eventually led us to talk about the mobius strip (which is a really cool mathematical concept - a surface with no beginning or end). Again, moments later, as our hike took us past a schoolyard, we see - yes, you guessed it - a playground toy in the shape of a mobius strip.

This second coincidence caused me to start thinking about the nature of, well, coincidence. It is true that we all experience these sorts of events from time to time, and any individual coincidence may seem surprising. But, if you think in terms of a lifetime, it would be far more surprising if we never experienced coincidences at all. In other words, coincidences are normal, expected events.

It was just about the time I was explaining this revelation to my friend when we realized that it may have been better for us to have spent more time watching where we were going, and less time talking. Yes, we were lost. But that's another story. No coincidence involved.