Have you ever met persons who were particularly important for you at a special moment or situation of your private or professional life? I am not thinking of magical circumstances but of something you may have done in order to meet these people – or these people may have done in order to meet you.
Yes, it does happen to almost everyone that you meet someone in life who is very important to you. I am an agnostic; so I do not know whether it was God's wish, but we do feel lucky to have met such people. But it is possible that even still better or more important people would have met you, chance happening. But it did not happen. I have met some very important people in life who proved to be very helpful to me in my career. But it was more on the basis of my work than on chance.
The right people will motivate you to become the absolute best version of yourself, without changing who you really are…just by being around you. The right people will be pursuing their own dreams and therefore believe it is possible – so they will encourage you to follow your own; even if they don’t have to say anything to do it.
http://jamesmsama.com/2013/07/02/the-importance-of-having-the-right-people-in-your-life/
Yes, it does happen to almost everyone that you meet someone in life who is very important to you. I am an agnostic; so I do not know whether it was God's wish, but we do feel lucky to have met such people. But it is possible that even still better or more important people would have met you, chance happening. But it did not happen. I have met some very important people in life who proved to be very helpful to me in my career. But it was more on the basis of my work than on chance.
The question is, "Is it a coincidence when we meet the right people?" But this strikes me as a question about "coincidence," or "accident," and virtue or efforts. I'm reminded of people sometimes saying that they "make their own luck," or others who say that it is all a matter of chance, circumstances and "La fortuna." Are we the victims of circumstances in our human relations, or can we "do something" to affect the outcomes? This is a good question, and answering it properly may take some considerable thought and effort.
What seems clear, and an insight of the ancient stoics, is that we can better control those things which are closer to us. So, we we only aim to control our own behavior, that is certainly much easier, and a more reasonable goal than attempting to control the entire wide-world. On the other hand, it is said that "no man is an island," and we are all certainly much effected by circumstances beyond our control. But just because of this, it is no good solution to simply retreat into ourselves, or into a smaller, and smaller world in order to avoid the problems of the wider world. It is important to come out of ourselves and find out what is going on in that wider world, though I think it not a good idea to remain planted on either side of the divide. If we are going to make good sense out of encounters, then we need to have them, but, on the other hand, to evaluate them, we need a place to stand. Back and forth is the rule of the stoics.
H.G. Callaway
I am fully agree with the answer of Prof.Lala Behari Sukla
The right people will motivate you to become the absolute best version of yourself, without changing who you really are…just by being around you. The right people will be pursuing their own dreams and therefore believe it is possible – so they will encourage you to follow your own; even if they don’t have to say anything to do it.
The question assumes (quitely enough) that you are a person with some values in your life and not another consumer who cares about the next model of smartphone X or car Y or ... If so, then it is not easy to find the right people, so when you finally found them, then you almost celebrate it.
Dear Martin,
I experienced coincidences at work and private life too. Just, pure and significant coincidences, without any preparations from my site or the other. The right people are surprising.
I often meet people which long time not seen and which I have just-I thought that meeting. Sometimes I meet such people in a totally unpredictable places. Also, I often meet random people who know of my acquaintances, friends, relatives. So it was with me in Bulgaria when I drove a cab driver. we talked and found friends in common.
For example, today I met a neighbor's old residence. It turned out that we live in a new house. And this happens to me often. I do not know what it is. But it is not a coincidence.
Dear Friends,
Thank you for so many posts during the first hour!
I am not inclined to believe in magic, so for me there should be a reason or cause behind it. Nevertheless I think we often have to do with coincidences (not magic). – But I think there is still something else that happens: the other person does something that changes ourselves. This is the beginning of something. Then, in retrospect it does not look like coincidence that we have many things in common.. – These things weren’t there from the beginning.
Most people I feel optimistic when I meet them. Even, I feel happy and cheerful when seeing them. You can reduce stress and increase well being by surrounding yourself with positive energy.
I met one of my co-authors at a conference (she was then still a PhD student). I just happened to select that session, and found her presentation interesting, so I told her that maybe in the future we could co-operate. Two years passed, and then I suddenly got an e-mail from her. We started writing a paper and later also another one and got both published.
“We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. I have ascertained on several occasions that at the moment when the dream occurred the letter was already lying in the post-office of the addressee.” Of course, Jung would say e-mail instead of letter my dear @Tiia!
― C.G. Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
My uncle, who died in 1990, was a close friend of a scholar at the University in which I have been working for the past 30 years. In 1984, I was introduced to this scholar & I admired him instantly. Soon afterwards & by chance, he became the dean of the College of Sciences & when I applied for work, this dean played a key role in my appointment. Of course, he was clever enough to ask others about me in order to be sure that he has supported the right person for the job. In 1987, he brought a distinguished visitor to the laboratory while I was giving a practical organic chemistry course & he told him something which made me "feel shy": This is the best instructor in the College of Sciences!! This raised my spirits but a heavy burden came to my shoulders which is (I have to double or triple my efforts to prove that he was not wrong in his judgment) & so my academic life has been affected since then & until now in the sense of becoming more tired than usual all the time.
Dear All,
Is it an example of coincidence?
“Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other… ”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
I think a real coincidence is when one met somebody with whom they both can complete each other or the coincident happening influence seriously his/her life. To meet an umbrella seller when it rains is not an important chance but to be able to make him/herself understood with somebody perfectly in two words or have the same ideas and desires, this is a wonderful coincidence. Many of us wait for such events during their whole life... often in vain.
As most of the contributors mentioned that there was someone in everybody's life who had a great impact and influence to make someone successful either in personal or in professional life.
I am also not an exception for being blessed by such incidences. When my first year PhD work in a lab was not moving very well one of my ex-high school friend helped me to change the track and to find a new lab and that actually had helped building my present expertise and credential in the area I work in.
Like thisI found my doctoral and postdoctoral supervisors equally important to build and progress my career in scientific research. I met my wife while finalizing my PhD thesis and she has influenced me a lot to navigate my goal and professional career.
As Asmat mentioned it is not always possible to plan well ahead to meet right people in right time. But the important thing I learned is when you meet someone and believe he/she could be an important connection, always try to build and continue either a personal or professional warm relationship. Every year I have a chance to meet fellow colleagues and researchers coming across the globe while participating in different international meetings and seminars. From where new idea, collaboration and scopes develop to move further. In this regard, I must mention that the relationship I built with such friends, philosophers and guides helped me a lot in different spheres of life and activities.
I think that because generally people can co-exist at all tells us that we are synchronized on some level. I don’t believe in co-incidence, life is forever presenting options to you and it has ways of emphasizing that it is an option, to find a friend or a lover that may change your life, to trigger a learning curve that can round your judgment, or to walk away and become an observer.
Dear friends, I believe that the challenging and important thing is to be the right person that adds value to the lives of others. Each of us has the capacity to be the right person. Have a good day :)
Coincidence has two opposing meanings, either dismissively as happenstance, "Oh, it was just a coincidence [a fluke]," or contrarily, "Wow, what a coincidence!" I adhere to the latter experience in all things, in every encounter from the mundane to the transcendental, all my life, stemming from one's values.
Dear Martin, I agree with your remark " but I think there is still something else that happens: the other person does something that changes ourselves".
I can add, that there is almost impossible to go by the right person without noticing it coincidentally. So, sometimes simple and accidental shaking hands while official meetings, can make positive or negative consternations in both persons. This is difficult to hide. These are my observations.
@Cj Nev
Very interesting – the distinction helps uncover some ambiguities. What I am interested in is the second meaning. When changing something in our lives we seem to enter a new “terrain” where new encounters become possible. Simple explanation: We will have changed the likelihood.
Anyway it is fascinating to hear stories about almost incredible co-incidences in the life of friends. E.g. what Ljubomir tells us about dreaming of a person before receiving a letter from her/him. A researcher will try to find an explanation. As for me I’m not a friend of fringe science.
@Miranda,
When you do the first step you will allow others to change something in your live. I was not always in a mood to allow this. There are times…
Usualy we think that we meet the right person: in relationships, at working place, in our social life. I strongly belive that nothing is random. Somehow we atract a special kind of people. Some of them are connected to our life forever and I’m not thinking to the belongings. Some of them are passing through our lives. One of them fulfil our souls, one of them fulfil our mind. Some of them show us what to do, some of them show us what not to do.
It is not important how long has been a person in our life, important is what and how deep traces draw a person in our soul and our mind.
The meeting with the only person worthy of the description Professor Patricia Berjak was coincidental!
Period!
Dear Martin, Thanks for clarifying your reference, which you also made clear in your question with there being a "changing" or "new terrain" as you put it. Perhaps, I speculate, because I was born with mutually a goto person, my poor twin brother, I have never felt a change or new terrain upon meeting others, more of a resumption or assumption when I meet others, only afterwards finding them far apart or occasionally very close together.
When I started at the community college, a professor in one class mentioned a professor down the hall with a Ph.D. (3 in fact) from Harvard and recommended we take advantage of that by enrolling in his courses, which were Philosophy and other Humanities. As soon as that class broke, I stepped lively down to his classroom where I found him in the hallway outside the classroom door and asked him if I could sit in on his classes because I was considering enrolling in them next term. He replied that he welcomed anyone into his classes. Sky-high, I thanked him, returning to the other class.
Seven years later, after transferring from the community college to the University of Michigan with only the foreign language requirement to complete for my bachelor's degree, I was back in the same place with by this time, my friend "Jim," we had just gotten out of the hospital for his heart condition. After the last lecture of the term before finals the next week, he let me know he would be in men's room next door, turned at the door where we first met and wished the students a happy Christmas. I was chatting with the students who eventually all left and then wondered where Jim was. He had laid himself down in the men's room, his hands crossed on his chest and feet crossed at the ankles, expired (out-spirit). He has been with me everyday guiding me, many more coincidences since and constant.
He brought Plato, Socrates and Aristotle, and the Presocratics alive for us. So as not to be a pest, I wanted to know if he cared for me as much as I cared for him. I was reading Plato's Lysis on Friendship and in there I will paraphrase, Plato scribes that it is not possible to love someone who does not also love you. Gosh, that made sense! I then knew.
Dear Cj,
Thank you for sharing your moving story. I’m sure it was not easy for you.
First I make clear that I do not believe in destiny or in God's interference. I think that meeting an influential person it is just chance! On the other hand there are a lot of people that I wish to have met and I did not!
Okay. Let's start with : there is no such a thing as coincidence. But there is probability.
Conclusion : I believe in action. Being proactive is enough for the human being to win the chance for meeting the right person in the right time.
Dear Kamal,
True. No mistake . There is no coincidence. Especially in love.
Yes, I believe it's a coincidence which becomes the most important milestone of your life, later on! We really wonder, how we lived so far, without the person in our life !
This very interesting discussion went to unpredictable, intimate area. Many answers are associated with happy events happened rather in private life areas and meetings of the love partners. It make this topic quiet poetic and full of "whisper frequencies". Thank you for sharing good emotions.
Dear friends,
It's fascinating for me to see how strongly you are involved in my (non-scientific) question.
Coincidences:
You already know that I am no friend of fringe sciences and I tend towards saying that there are no coincidences, just like Masa and many of you do. But I have to tell you this:
It happened to me twice that during a day I thought of a celebrity and I found myself thinking: “He is very old, is he still living at all?”
Then, in the evening news on TV it was said that the person died on that day. The first time it happened with Picasso – the second time with a German actor. - Now, before you begin to wish that your name had better never become known to me – let me tell you that it did not happen again.
Dear Martin,
What an extraordinary story about Picasso and the German actor. The imagine of Picasso came in to your mind in the day he died because there were a lot of discussion about this topic around the world. Somehow this news jumpt into your had from the collective consciousness because the emotion of this story was so strong and touched several minds and souls.
Dear Martin,
How nice to read something hilarious in the morning. Your experiences and conclusions make me smile. Thank you, I appreciate your sense of dark humor. On the other hand, death is inevitable part of our lives, even announced or thought by RG colleague.
@ Beata, wonderful words, "This topic quiet poetic and full of "whisper frequencies". Thank you for sharing good emotions".
I agree @ gopinath. In my point of you, I experienced coincidences at my life. It will be motivated for my career. I think it is magic. Because it is a happened by unexpected.
@ Martin, your coincidences do not surprise me much because I really have experienced similar incidences. Many a times my wishful thinking has come true on the same day I wish. Similarly sometimes I keep very important things in very special places so that I find them when I want and wonder whether I will find them hen I want and truly I have never again found them !
Dear Jaya,
Thank your for your kind post. There is one little detail I want to make clear: in my case: it was not wishful thinking coming true.
You told an interesting story about things that we never find again.
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