Happenchance

 

Did you ever see the movie "Magnolia?" 

The movie starts out with the narrator telling us about several "random" individual incidents that really aren't random after all.  

In the New York Herald, November 26, the year 1911, there is an account of the hanging of three men. They died for the murder of Sir Edmund William Godfrey, Husband, Father, Pharmacist, and all-around gentle-man resident of Greenberry Hill, London. He was murdered by three vagrants whose motive was simple robbery. They were identified as Joseph Green, Stanley Berry, and Daniel Hill. Green, Berry, Hill. And I Would Like To Think This Was Only A Matter Of Chance.

As I sat at the bar last night sipping on my martini (shaken, not stirred), a memory of a happenchance meeting jolted me into the past.  One night, long ago, at this very bar, I was sitting reading a book by myself when a woman sitting at the bar with friends noticed me and called me over.  We ended up talking through the night and remain friends to this day.  

When we look at individual moments, in the here and now, all seem unconnected but when we look at the woven fabric of our lives, there is a certain connectivity to it all. One thread leads to another. 

The perceived randomness of the universe may not be as random as we would like to think. 

...it is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just “Something That Happened.” This cannot be “One of those things…

More often than not, one of those things, is part of something much bigger. 

It happens all of the time. 

Happenchance?  Not a chance.