Everyone has at least one small world story. You know, those miraculous coincidences when you run into an acquaintance in the unlikeliest of places, or meet someone who seems uncannily like someone else you know.
My most bizarre small world story happened years ago. I was about 10 years out of high school when I traveled to Brazil on a rickety bus through the Venezuelan and Brazilian jungles. On my return trip, while stopped at a little thatch-roofed jungle refreshment stand, I heard my name. “Eric?” asked a nearby bearded guy as I chatted with a Swede who was riding the same bus. A quick, though faint, glimpse of recognition. “Mario?” We didn’t know each other well in high school, but we were mystified at the forces that pulled us together thousands of miles from home on a remote jungle bus at the same time.
I had another, though different, small world story, just last week. I was doing a one-day climb of the high points of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Near the top of Mt. Frissell, which leads to the high point of Connecticut, I met Topher,
who happened to be dressed exactly the same as me.
Not only that. Topher and I are near the same age; he, like me, has one son and one daughter in their 20s (and, as in my case, his son is the eldest); and after running into him on Mt. Frissell, I met him again on the summit of Mt. Greylock. We both had the same high points plan at exactly the same time and dressed in matching climbing outfits (and I almost never wear that shirt!), and we hadn’t discussed our plans at all. In fact, we only talked briefly; I was curious, and a little afraid, of what we might have discovered of our commonalities had we kept talking.
This wasn’t as out there as my Brazil encounter. Still, it gives one pause. What is going on in our universe to cause such odds-defying coincidences? Are we meant to infer something from these strange trysts, or learn something from the people we run into?
I am open to theories. What is your small world story?