The Subtle Fabric Of Coincidences And Luck

Coincidences have always aroused curiosity and fascinated human beings. Sometimes everything seems to synchronize in an inexplicable way, so that two situations that apparently have nothing to do with each other coincide. For this reason, many have always associated these casualties with forces from beyond.

Luck was also the source of many reflections and big questions. It has been studied from philosophers to esoterics. It is a force that has been present since the beginning of life. Why are we born? Why in this family, in this country, in these circumstances and not others? Is there something that explains it or is luck simply chaotic and indecipherable?

Both about luck and coincidences, several theories have emerged. They range from those who rely on statistics, to those who see in these phenomena a supernatural intervention. Within the framework of psychology, a respectable name stands out, that of Karl Jung. This psychoanalyst, first follower of Freud and founder of his own school, dedicated a good part of his work to these phenomena. It was he who postulated the interesting concept of “synchronicity”.

What was said about coincidences and luck?

One of the first to wonder about these factors was Hippocrates, the father of medicine. According to this Greek sage, all the components of the universe were linked by “hidden affinities”. In other words, for him there were laws that explained everything, but they were not yet known.

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher of great relevance, thought something similar: “ the fate of an individual invariably adjusts to the fate of another, and each person is the protagonist of his own drama, while simultaneously being figured in a drama alien to him. This is something beyond our powers of understanding.”

With Sigmund Freud begins to take shape the concept of “collective unconscious”, which is common to all human beings. It was definitively shaped by Carl Jung. They are memories, fantasies, desires of which we are not aware and which are present in all of us. This gives rise to an also unconscious communication between people, which would explain, to a large extent, what we call coincidences.

Later, the same psychoanalyst developed the concept of “synchronicity”. This is defined as “the simultaneity of two occurrences linked by meaning, but in an acausal way”. In other words, the confluence of two situations, without one being the cause of the other, but which have a content that complements each other. Jung’s postulates, over time, even spawned a number of magical thought forms.

Do coincidences exist or are they fabricated?

While Jung’s theory is attractive, it is not the only one that explains coincidences and luck. For Freud, father of psychoanalysis and Jung’s teacher, it goes the other way. In your focus, coincidence does not exist by itself. It is the human being who manufactures it, due to their stubborn tendency to give meaning to everything that happens. Also because neuroses induce to repeat traumatic situations.

For classical psychoanalysis no element of reality has meaning by itself. It is the human being who grants it, depending on their desires and traumas. In this sense, there is a tendency to see coincidences where they do not exist. “Just the day I was walking down that street I bumped into that person, who turned out to be the love of my life” . However, this happened another 30 times with people who were not his loves. In fact, the “love of life” can also be a fantasy. Beautiful, but still a fantasy.

On the other hand, neurobiology has found that when there is a high dose of dopamine in the brain, it tends to create patterns in everything. Patterns like seeing coincidences where they don’t exist. To establish connections, sometimes quite strange, between facts that do not relate to each other.

Perhaps those situations that occur to us by what we call coincidence actually correspond to an unconscious script. Without realizing it, we try to be in certain situations or live certain experiences. Perhaps the human being is not so at the mercy of luck and bad luck as many suppose. Your unconscious desires and fantasies are the ones that draw what we call destiny. And giving it a magic paint, in one way or another, gives us a certain satisfaction.