NationStates Jolt Archive

I was reading the anagram thred and it got me thinking about coincidences.

I have had a lot of strange things happen, things that are beyond my explaination. Like my husband having a dream about me when he was a child, and telling his mom all about me. The fact that we came very close to meeting eachother at least 4 times before we were "properly introduced" even though we didn't know any people in common. Then there is the way we actually met, in which a chain of events that is just crazy brought us together, and we ended up on the same team in a league even though we didn't know eachother.

Things like that can be written off as "someone's interpretation after the fact" for skeptics though.

I often when bored look for patterns, I am not sure why but I am pretty good at finding them (hence where the anagram thred got me thinking here)

Like my grandmother (who I was very close to) died 19 days before I gave birth to my first child, who has 19 letters in her name, and was 19 inches long, I was 19 when I had her, and I had gone into labor on the 19th.

Do you have any weird patterns in your life? Coincidences?

Do you ever sit and look for patterns? What do you think causes things like this? Is it all just random but cool?

-snip-
Do you have any weird patterns in your life? Coincidences?

Do you ever sit and look for patterns? What do you think causes things like this? Is it all just random but cool?

This is a bit too autistic for me.

This is a bit too autistic for me.
yeah, one of my former doctors thought it was OCD-ish. ;) I have complete control over it though it's not a compulsion or anything, I just find it interesting.

yeah, one of my former doctors thought it was OCD-ish. ;) I have complete control over it though it's not a compulsion or anything, I just find it interesting.

As long as that is the case, then good for you. I notice patterns, but I never look for them. It's like I'll go "oh, that reminds me of this and that," but I never linger.

Well, in my family, the saying 'For every birth a death and for every death, a birth' has stood true for each and every one of us. My poor mother is now indirectly responsible for five deaths, a cousin for me, another cousin for my sister, my uncle for my brother, my great grandmother for my brother, and three people died not long after the time my sister was born...

Can they be counted as coincidences?

Can they be counted as coincidences?

Well, either that or you've got a crazed serial killer on your hands.

Humans are hardwired to look for patterns in anything and everything - really over-wired, actually. That's part of the problem with paranoid schizophrenics - their pattern-detection facilities are hyperactive, even by our species' twisted standards. Not saying that you're a paranoid schizo - just an anecdote. My point is that these effects where people think they see bizarre patterns of coincidences in everyday life are rooted in hardwired pattern overanalysis.

interesting. I am the only one I know who does this and it freaks people out. I thought I might find someone else on NS who would admit to it, since I have found them admiting to other weird stuff I do, I thought maybe there was a weird subculture here or something.

I've noticed more than a few odd patterns in my life, and a few friends have told me of patterns in their lives, but it just leads me to believe in something greater than humanity acting on us. (Think Jung's collective unconscious.) I don't even bother to keep track of them anymore, even just as mental notes. If I did, I'd have massive mental filing cabinets full of massive binders full of "coincidence or not?" situations I've been in.

But watch, now! Anyone who reads this thread will probably find an odd pattern in the next day or two in their life, even if they only acknowledge it for a moment then write it off as being a figment of their imagination.

interesting. I am the only one I know who does this and it freaks people out. I thought I might find someone else on NS who would admit to it, since I have found them admiting to other weird stuff I do, I thought maybe there was a weird subculture here or something.

Coincidences... perhaps.

I dreamed of a location, in my (very) early teens... that I later actually visited. The venue I didn't recognise at age 11/12 turned out to be a nightclub I got in a fight in, at age 19/20.

I once wrote a poem about a girl I didn't actually even meet until a year after I wrote it....

Not so much on the patterns, though...

Coincidences... perhaps.

I dreamed of a location, in my (very) early teens... that I later actually visited. The venue I didn't recognise at age 11/12 turned out to be a nightclub I got in a fight in, at age 19/20.
That happened to me once. I had a dream about a place and people I didn't recognize, then about three or four years later after I'd moved to a different state, that exact dream played out in my school cafeteria. It wasn't that long, maybe two minutes or so, but at the end I was like "woah, wait... That was in a dream I had!"

That happened to me once. I had a dream about a place and people I didn't recognize, then about three or four years later after I'd moved to a different state, that exact dream played out in my school cafeteria. It wasn't that long, maybe two minutes or so, but at the end I was like "woah, wait... That was in a dream I had!"
It happens to some people I know every couple of months, and I've had a situation like that at least every 2 weeks for the last few years. Now I just shake my head and move on, and people wonder why I smile and giggle internally so often. ;)

Coincidences... perhaps.

I dreamed of a location, in my (very) early teens... that I later actually visited. The venue I didn't recognise at age 11/12 turned out to be a nightclub I got in a fight in, at age 19/20.

I once wrote a poem about a girl I didn't actually even meet until a year after I wrote it....

Not so much on the patterns, though...
yeah, my husband had a dream about me when he was very young (like 6 or 7) and described me to his mom, and said he was going to marry the "kangaroo girl" he told me once that I was "the girl of his dreams" which I wrote off as a line, but his mom confirmed the dream for me, as far as the kangaroo thing, my first name is Joey (aka a baby kangaroo which is also how I explain to people so they don't call me Jodie)

I have deja vu a lot too though, it's weird, sometimes when I am reading a book I know what will come next word for word even though I have never read it before, it's freaky.

yeah, my husband had a dream about me when he was very young (like 6 or 7) and described me to his mom, and said he was going to marry the "kangaroo girl" he told me once that I was "the girl of his dreams" which I wrote off as a line, but his mom confirmed the dream for me, as far as the kangaroo thing, my first name is Joey (aka a baby kangaroo which is also how I explain to people so they don't call me Jodie)

I have deja vu a lot too though, it's weird, sometimes when I am reading a book I know what will come next word for word even though I have never read it before, it's freaky.

I think there are two kinds of experience often written off as being the same thing...

There is deja vu (pure), which is the feeling of repeating something you've already seen... effectively.

Then, there are some things, like we've seen described here... that are more than just a passing familiarity with an event as it happens. I mean - I drew pictures of that night club, 7 years (ish) before I went there... That's not just 'deja vu'.

(The nightclub wasn't the only dream like that... just the clearest).

I tend to recognize and identify patterns easily, which may be why I'm so paranoid (my house is surrounded by SAM sites, barbed wire fences, anti-teleportation devices, charms, sand traps, bunkers, pillboxes, tantalum armor, mobile railguns, attack satellites, land mines, and Death Stars just in case none of those things work... and I still think everyone is out to get me. Because it's true.). ;)

I think there are two kinds of experience often written off as being the same thing...

There is deja vu (pure), which is the feeling of repeating something you've already seen... effectively.

Then, there are some things, like we've seen described here... that are more than just a passing familiarity with an event as it happens. I mean - I drew pictures of that night club, 7 years (ish) before I went there... That's not just 'deja vu'.

(The nightclub wasn't the only dream like that... just the clearest).
true. I meant to separate them more clearly. ;)

Does anyone else ever get the book thing happen to them though? I mean it's different than the movie thing, where you just might come up with the same line in your head, or know that so and so is most likely to happen, it's like I know paragraphs ahead of time word for word what it will say.

I think there are two kinds of experience often written off as being the same thing...

There is deja vu (pure), which is the feeling of repeating something you've already seen... effectively.

Then, there are some things, like we've seen described here... that are more than just a passing familiarity with an event as it happens. I mean - I drew pictures of that night club, 7 years (ish) before I went there... That's not just 'deja vu'.

(The nightclub wasn't the only dream like that... just the clearest).
Yeah, they're often lumped together, even though in one you've never seen or done the situation/activity before, and in the other you have, but it's been in a dream or vision of some kind long before it happened. There are some fuzzy scientific explanations for the former (your eyes jump ahead or your brain processes what you see subconsciously, then you get to what your brain already registered and experience the déjà vu) whereas the latter has no 'scientific' explanation I've seen.

... and I still think everyone is out to get me. Because it's true.). ;)

And not because, say, you've surrounded yourself with deathstars filled with millions upon millions of troops? I mean, If I wanted to kill you then wouldn't it be easy to infiltrate one of the death stars and use it against you. They've millions of troops inside, no one is going to notice one more sneaking towards the control room....

Sometimes I think I get deja vu, but when I think about it, it's more likely that my life has simply descended to a level of mundanity and repetition where everything happens in a two week similarity cycle.

And not because, say, you've surrounded yourself with deathstars filled with millions upon millions of troops? I mean, If I wanted to kill you then wouldn't it be easy to infiltrate one of the death stars and use it against you. They've millions of troops inside, no one is going to notice one more sneaking towards the control room....

Had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything's perfectly alright now. We're fine, we're all fine, here now, thank you. How are you?

And not because, say, you've surrounded yourself with deathstars filled with millions upon millions of troops? I mean, If I wanted to kill you then wouldn't it be easy to infiltrate one of the death stars and use it against you. They've millions of troops inside, no one is going to notice one more sneaking towards the control room....
No, because there are no control rooms... I control the Death Stars from my house. All of them. ;)

i have dreams about people taht i have never seen befor.

true. I meant to separate them more clearly. ;)

Does anyone else ever get the book thing happen to them though? I mean it's different than the movie thing, where you just might come up with the same line in your head, or know that so and so is most likely to happen, it's like I know paragraphs ahead of time word for word what it will say.

I've had 'the book thing'... and it is usually from books that come to be very important to me later in life.

(The American Sci-Fi writer, Sheri S Tepper - often labelled as Feminist Sci-Fi - has been a very important reference in my life, and I've had the knowledge, before I got to it, of what her books were going to say, several times).

I find myself wondering if maybe, some resonances in our later lives are so strong, that we feel echoes before they happen....?

Yeah, they're often lumped together, even though in one you've never seen or done the situation/activity before, and in the other you have, but it's been in a dream or vision of some kind long before it happened. There are some fuzzy scientific explanations for the former (your eyes jump ahead or your brain processes what you see subconsciously, then you get to what your brain already registered and experience the déjà vu) whereas the latter has no 'scientific' explanation I've seen.

The only (pseudo-scientific) explanation I can come up with, is that our perceptions are not ALWAYS as limited as our senses... that sometimes we can perceive things that are outside of the scope of our rational perception... either in distance, or in time.

If there IS an element of our being, that is not connected to our physicality, that is PURE perception, perhaps we can perceive outside of the laws of causality, when the setting is right for it.

Normally - I'm not one looking for this 'kind' of answer... but this is something I've experienced personally....

I've had 'the book thing'... and it is usually from books that come to be very important to me later in life.

(The American Sci-Fi writer, Sheri S Tepper - often labelled as Feminist Sci-Fi - has been a very important reference in my life, and I've had the knowledge, before I got to it, of what her books were going to say, several times).

I find myself wondering if maybe, some resonances in our later lives are so strong, that we feel echoes before they happen....?

Well... parapsychology would account for that type of experience, essentially says we have weak psychic powers that are very intermittantly of some use, particulary in natural and sexual selection contexts. It's enough of an advantage not to be selected _against_, but too 'costly' to refine very much; it does a 'good enough' job, and in the absense of a strong condition that 'demands', as it were, its development, it stays fairly rudimentary.

Not sure what natural or sexual selection is served by the specific example of words in a book, though! (Unless, as you say, it proves to be of great personal importance to you :)) Maybe it's more likely you've tapped in to the writer's mojo, exactly what they were trying to put across, you've become familiar with the style and technique of the writing etc.?

Humans are hardwired to look for patterns in anything and everything - really over-wired, actually.
True, so I do tend to take any experiences of this kind with a grain of salt.

The dreaming about things before they happen or knowing what's in a paragraph ahead, though, are pretty freaky (as long as they're not just déja vu, obviously).

Nothing "fancy" like that has ever happened to me, though.

I've made the experience that coincidences often come in threes. Like, some friend mentions something about an old school buddy I haven't even thought of in ages, and then the next day I'm on the Internet and stumble upon an article written by that very same old forgotten school buddy, and, that same evening, I talk to a friend and they mention how they just met said old school buddy a few weeks ago and if I remember him.
Just stuff like that. A friend of mine even has a word for that, "Klumpung", which translates as something like "clustering". Though there have to be at least three related coincidences to qualify as Klumpung.

Elgesh']Well... parapsychology would account for that type of experience, essentially says we have weak psychic powers that are very intermittantly of some use, particulary in natural and sexual selection contexts. It's enough of an advantage not to be selected _against_, but too 'costly' to refine very much; it does a 'good enough' job, and in the absense of a strong condition that 'demands', as it were, its development, it stays fairly rudimentary.

Not sure what natural or sexual selection is served by the specific example of words in a book, though! (Unless, as you say, it proves to be of great personal importance to you :)) Maybe it's more likely you've tapped in to the writer's mojo, exactly what they were trying to put across, you've become familiar with the style and technique of the writing etc.?

Sounds good to me. I'm too much of a skeptic to bet the farm on any given 'theory', but this sounds like as good an explanation as I'm likely to find.

:)

This kind of stuff never happens to me... :(

Well, earlier this year, I was thinking...out of all the things I could think about, my dog. Odd. I wondered what it would be like without a dog in the house should he die. Seemingly idle thoughts. 8 hours later, he was dead...from a sudden condition.

I get minor things like that sometimes. Usually not involving death, which is fortunate.

This kind of stuff never happens to me... :(

I know. It never happens to me either. Or else it happens all the time, and I'm blithely unaware.

I have those experiences every so often were a 15 second span of time has happened before, like I dreamed it or something. Obviously I never notice it the first time because it's like every other fifteen seconds, but what get reallly confusing is when it happens a 3rd time. I didn't dream it twice did I? <_> I know by the third time that I could change it by doing somthing different than what happened before but I never do....I dunno...

I know. It never happens to me either. Or else it happens all the time, and I'm blithely unaware.

Which just gave me a thought... when I coupled it with something Smunkeeville said earlier...

I was (pretty much) clinical OCD as a young teen, and have had these 'things' happen, that have been borne out in the fullness of time.

I believe Smunkee said she was OCD, and had similar recollections.

What about others who HAVE had these experiences?

Is there some sort of correlation?

Could it be as simple as: Everyone has them, but only those with obsessive tendencies remember them?

Which just gave me a thought... when I coupled it with something Smunkeeville said earlier...

I was (pretty much) clinical OCD as a young teen, and have had these 'things' happen, that have been borne out in the fullness of time.

I believe Smunkee said she was OCD, and had similar recollections.

What about others who HAVE had these experiences?

Is there some sort of correlation?

Could it be as simple as: Everyone has them, but only those with obsessive tendencies remember them?

Interesting idea; maybe not limited to OCD, but anyone who 'thinks differently'? I'm thinking of schizotypy, in particular.

Elgesh']Interesting idea; maybe not limited to OCD, but anyone who 'thinks differently'? I'm thinking of schizotypy, in particular.
Perhaps it's something that family of diseases has in common with regards to its effects on the brain? What I wouldn't give to be able to research it properly, though.. (I love that kind of stuff. ^^; )

Elgesh']Interesting idea; maybe not limited to OCD, but anyone who 'thinks differently'? I'm thinking of schizotypy, in particular.
ah, but most of the problems schizophrenics have are because of halucinations, they pull unrelated things and make them into patterns.

That happened to me once. I had a dream about a place and people I didn't recognize, then about three or four years later after I'd moved to a different state, that exact dream played out in my school cafeteria. It wasn't that long, maybe two minutes or so, but at the end I was like "woah, wait... That was in a dream I had!" That sort of thing happens to me occasionally. One can never be sure though. I just put it down to the world being a horribly weird place.

Do you ever sit and look for patterns? What do you think causes things like this? Is it all just random but cool?
What we call "coincidences" are the same as "omens", although that latter term usually applies only to the bad ones.

We are individually conscious, observing the world around us from our unique perspectives. As such, with our limited capacity, we tend to isolate things to focus on: we isolate sounds in a noisy room, we isolate one thing to look at, and one thing at a time to say. And when things catch our eye, even if unrelated, incidents that happen, patterns that match, we tend to focus on them. And as we are now focused on them, we can note more and more.

That's how I think coincidence works.

Prophetic dreaming, that's another thing entirely.

ah, but most of the problems schizophrenics have are because of halucinations, they pull unrelated things and make them into patterns.

Ahh, but it's not unrelated to the paranoid schizophrenic. Just like this post that I'm sure I answered tomorrow sometime. Everything has a pattern if you look for it.




Ahh, but it's not unrelated to the paranoid schizophrenic. Just like this post that I'm sure I answered tomorrow sometime. Everything has a pattern if you look for it.:D

Like my husband having a dream about me when he was a child, and telling his mom all about me. The fact that we came very close to meeting eachother at least 4 times before we were "properly introduced" even though we didn't know any people in common. Then there is the way we actually met, in which a chain of events that is just crazy brought us together, and we ended up on the same team in a league even though we didn't know eachother.

I often when bored look for patterns, I am not sure why but I am pretty good at finding them (hence where the anagram thred got me thinking here)

I can totally relate to what you say. So many things like this have happened to me, that I believe strongly that everything happens for a reason. With so much tie-in going on in life, it seems logical there is a higher force controlling us all. Now whether that is a 'god' or not, remains to be debated....

yeah, one of my former doctors thought it was OCD-ish. ;) I have complete control over it though it's not a compulsion or anything, I just find it interesting.

that is so me. i do it so much. and i get a deja vu quite often, it's weird. i have loads of these kind of patterns, have found countless coincidences. many of then insignificant, many quite big not to notice. for instance, this is not really much to do with me, but my mum went all the way over the west coast of america to live. there, she made a couple of friends. these friends knew another irish person and introduced my mum to her. they both got talking and it turned out the irish person was my mother's sister-in-law's sister!

ah, but most of the problems schizophrenics have are because of halucinations, they pull unrelated things and make them into patterns.
schizotypy I said - a personality trait present in all people to a degree, association with the magic, pattern-seeing thinking of schizophrenia etc. :)