"A million coincidences"

Contemplating the little eccentricities of life as he sat (was it at a park in Paris?) and gazed at the wasted features of his schoolteacher who had been his first lover in his youth, the middle-aged man could not but marvel at "a million coincidences" that, on that particular day, brought them together once more in a communion of minds, if no longer of bodies and senses.

"A million coincidences." Was it not Aldous Huxley, in one of his earlier novels, who invested the phrase with the power and pathos of personal revelation? Who dares question that, indeed, a million coincidences must have brought us all together at this time in our lives, in this place, in this temper?

How many of the same books must we have read, philosophies we must have imbibed, tragedies we must have experienced, losses we must have overcome, options we must have chosen, for us to be bound in just this way in our earthly journey?

And we are nowhere near the end, either. Every single day, a million more coincidences will occur to gradually move us closer, you and I, to that crossroad where once more or never again or at last we shall connect, fellow travelers finding a brief consolation, or a fevered embrace, or a lasting meaning, to our individual journeys.

Do not call anywhere, any point, home. Refuse any promise of a final shelter, a true love. As long as we breathe, there will await us an infinity of possibilities, probabilities. The secret is to keep on feeling, growing, learning from each coincidence that ties us, whether loosely or tightly, in temporary communion.

I believe in miracles, in that divine intelligence that directs every little movement in our universe. For at the end of the day, by whatever name we may wish to call the Almighty and whatever gender we may ascribe to God, it is still those million coincidences, each one transfiguring all the moments of our existence, that cannot but assure us that, yes, there awaits, however brief, an exhilarating tomorrow.

Even if it's only in our minds and our dreams.
--NBT

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"Nightcap," The Evening Paper, 27 June 1996