It's a small world, or is it?

I was sitting here thinking of all the odd things that have happened in my life with running into random people in the strangest of places.

The one that comes to mind most is an encounter I had in London at the airport going on a shuttle years ago. I was already inside and the doors open when in walks a childhood friend who I had not seen in probably 25+ years. We said hi and laughed about how we ran into each other and how small the world is and so on.....I've had other strange encounters and it always makes me wonder.

Why that person? What are the odds you would run into someone in an airport in another country that you knew when you were like 10!

Is the world really small or are all these some kind of sign you are where you're suppose to be in this world. Something like a design or matrix or whatever you want to call it.

Please share your experiences with this. Do you see it as something more? Synchronicities and coincidences have always peaked my interest.

I believe in randomness.
As long as someone is not dead their is a chance I can run into them wherever they are or they can run into me wherever I am.

Not dissimilar from the primary story at the heart of the movie Signs.

It is no coincidence that you ran into that guy far away. We have a connection with people we know, we can sense where to find them and subconsciously take a path to meet them. Some religions go through a shunning process to break these links so their religion is not effected by the changed perception of the individual that has been removed from the organization.

This link is real, I spent quite a few months looking at research on this but the problem is that people cannot consciously control it well. The communication between our conscious and our subconscious is complicated too, the subconscious has a much higher frequency and unless you learn to slow it down and translate it the information is nothing more than gut instinct or just good luck

If your subconscious does not approve of what your conscious is doing, it can sabotage it too and a person will spiral downhill fast.

originally posted by: opethPA
I believe in randomness

Not dissimilar from the primary story at the heart of the movie Signs.

That is one of my favorite movies. What do you see as the primary story?

a reply to: mblahnikluver

My wife and I notice a lot of weird happenings around us.

We will be talking and mention a person from our past that we haven't seen in years and then bump into them at Walmart the next day.

On our last vacation we stopped at a gas station in a really small town and the car parked in front of us had a bumper sticker from my daughters school....600 miles from home.

Yeah, it's a small world but ya gotta wonder sometimes if there is more going on that we just don't understand.

I've never had this happen.

I lived in New York from 87 to 94...I used to like the South Street Seaport and the out door restaurants there. I was there one night with my sister, her daughter and my two kids. Low and behold our waiter was a boy I went to Highschool with. Not a friend per say, but I knew him and he knew me. I thought WOW, what are the odds. We exchanged the normal questions, he asked what brought me to New York, I told him 87 Buick Regal....lol. I asked him why he was in New York and what he told me took me off guard. He said " I came up here to become a country music singer" I said to myself ( damn you didn't take geography, you in the wrong damn state). We tipped him well cause we figured he was gonna need it. Before we left I let him know Nashville was where country music is made....only thing made in New York is liberal anger.

In the words of comedian Steven(?) Wright:
They say it is a small world, but I would hate to be the one who had to paint it.

originally posted by: wylekat
I've never had this happen.

Me neither. I'd love to run into a couple of specific childhood friends, but if I don't, oh well, I have the fond memories at least.

a reply to: mblahnikluver

Please share your experiences with this. Do you see it as something more?

The term I have come up with to describe these types of events is
"Karmic Season".

A Karmic Season may span several lifetimes , occurring once in each
lifetime, or it may occur several times within one lifetime.
During a Karmic Season, you repeat in some way what you
have done in the past.

My own example:
I was in Kindergarten when I saw my first Praying Mantis.
Some kid had brought a Mantis egg sack to school . It hatched
and there were hundreds of Mantis babies on the schoolroom
wall. They escaped through air holes in the jar that held the
egg sack.
Fast forward : I am married and have a Kindergarten aged son.
While doing something on the roof outside of my son's room,
I see a Praying Mantis on the window sill. I decide to catch it
and show it to my son. Then it Hit me: I was about the same age
when I saw my first Mantis. Understand now ,that Mantis
sightings are not an everyday thing here. My son is 24 now ,
and I have only seen one other Mantis since showing him
his first Mantis

But yeah , The Mantis enlightened me: "Karmic Seasons"

a reply to: mblahnikluver

I stepped off an airplane in SE Asia at about as close as you can get to the "opposite side of the planet" from home (to get to 'exactly' opposite would have been in the sea), and hadn't walked 20 feet when I ran into not one, but TWO, people I knew from years before. We were all standing there talking about what a strange and remarkable coincidence it was, but it got even weird-er. Turned out we were all there for the same reason, and would be working on the same project (all for different companies)! None of us had seen the others for about 15 years, and yet here we were.

I pretty much concluded it is indeed a 'small world' after all from that point onward.

Here's something else kind of interesting also (almost the converse concept). ...

I spend a lot of time in airports (read: a LOT). I often muse that most people I see there I know there's about a 100% chance I will never see that person again in my lifetime. And, to the best of my knowledge this has held true.

So what are the odd then of running into two people you thought you'd never see again...on the other side of the planet??

LOL...and to be completely honest here, one of the two people I ran into that day I had secretly hoped...I'd never run into again!! LOL!

In 1996 I moved to NM for a few years.
In Indiana, I had a drinking buddy, you know, not really a friend per se, but someone you'd run into in the bars, converse with, etc.

My 2nd week in Albq., I went to my neighborhood corner bar (the kind of place made from an old house, in a residential neighborhood), and noticed a car w/ an Indiana plate parked nearby...it looked familair, didnt think anything of it. Walked in, and my Indiana buddy was sitting at the bar. Turns out his older cousin owned the place.


In 1989, I worked for a semi-known rock band. We had 5 dates in UK, including 1 festival. I ran into an old HS buddy backstage.

I live 100 miles from where I grew up, right now. I often run into someone I grew up with/went to school with/knew back when.

2 points:

1 - people are much more mobile/well traveled than they were even 50 years ago.
2 - remember the whole '7 degrees of Kevin Bacon' thing? Most people are 7 (or less) steps away from knowing each other. My cousin worked for a well known company, and met the founder many times, so Im 2 degrees away from him.

a reply to: mblahnikluver

What are the odds that we run into that one person that we spend the rest of our lives with, have children with, grow old with, sit on the front porch with and watch our families gather, our grand kids and the lives we have always known. What if something were to have happened, that prevented us from meeting that person. Those families, children, grandchildren, memories, the moments shared, the joy and the pain, all of it. Gone.

Would we ever let that be taken from us? Yet it was simply a chance meeting.

How many times have we lost entire generations of love and joy by not taking the courage to say "Hi!" to that someone. Or a missed opportunity. How many entire lives, lost.

What if....

a reply to: mblahnikluver

I think everything happens for a reason.