Social Media, for me, serves to highlight the connections that exist between us all.
As I made new friends and “met up” with old school chums, I was initially surprised to find that their friends were known to me.
This was not just an obvious set of connections either.
An old school friend happened to be the sister of one of my children’s friends.
An old school friend is the mother of another.
The FB “mutual” friend tab brings up some unlikely links.
More than this, things happen which hint at there being more than coincidence going on.
My parents were on a holiday in Wales years ago and on a whim boarded a train for a ride through the mountains. The train drew in to a little station where another train was stopping on the opposite line. Who should be in the seat directly next to theirs as the two carriages came to a halt but none other than my closest friend at the time who, likewise on a whim, had jumped on a train that day.
On another occasion, walking home through town I met a lad I had been to school with. He was bubbling over with the news that his first child had just been born. A few years later, on the same spot we ran into each other again and he, once again was delighted because his second child had just been born.
Huge coincidences but they do hint at an overall mechanic, a sense and order which we are just too witless to properly discern.
I should add that I am extremely irreligious and flinch at the sweeping generalisations that are made when folk attempt to convince me of a divine power.
I have no problem with Belief. Faith is a precious and supportive thing. By definition it cannot be argued with. It’s just not something I have.
Probably the final point I should make is that the longer we live the more sense we make of the chaos around us. Sometimes, like seeing “ghosts” in the dark, we think we see more than is there. Our brains are hard wired to make sense of what’s around us.
Mother Nature, Religion or just a fuzzy feeling of there being a higher power controlling our lives is just us, struggling to see order where there really isn’t any.
