Coincidence.

There can sometimes seem to be a certain randomness to events; a kind of chaotic Brownian motion that swirls about, absent direction, order or logic.  And it is definitely true that many occurrences are unconnected to one another; say, two people meeting at a ball game after not seeing each other for many months or years.  What a coincidence we say and we would almost certainly be right, unless one person was secretly stalking the other, but that is the stuff of Hollywood thrillers.

Yet we know from science that there are many events which ARE correlated and causal.  in fact much of science is devoted precisely to figuring out this vast cosmic puzzle.

And then there are those events that seem to be connected but are not.  I have had those moments where I am convinced that something terrible is about to befall a friend or family member.  I call them and tell them to be careful, only to find, a few days later that they barely avoided a tree crashing down on the road in front of them.  Did I have a premonition of a future event?  Maybe I did, but to be honest it is far more likely that this premonition was another coincidence.  I have had many more feelings of impending danger, only to discover that nothing bad happened.   False alarm.  It is our nature to *report* the successes and remain silent on the “failures”, so the reported data is skewed toward those events which succeed.  

Finally there are events which are crafted to appear coincidental but ride on top of an underlying deception.  The fact that I was at the scene of the crime with a knife AND a gun is mere happenstance your Honor.  

And don’t get me started on fate and destiny.  Down that road lies a tree crashing down.