Spiritual Serendipity Blog
Journey
Around 2001, I was on a spiritual journey in Union Square, reading books by Deepak Chopra, Eckart Tolle and James Redfield. And I started experiencing all these wonderful coincidences. I would see people I knew pop up at the most interesting times and in the most interesting circumstances. One time, I was reading “The Alchemist” by a pool in Las Vegas, and I was thinking about my childhood friends. And I put down the book, and in the pool is one of my childhood friends! I would see also see celebrities from time to time, which made me feel like I was somehow on the right path. I was writing my screenplay in Barnes and Noble, and I needed to research about Chess, so I went down to the Chess section, and three’s Paul Giamatti, one of my favorite actors, looking in the chess section. We talked a bit and he told me he was trying to get in touch with my mentor, Austin Pendleton, who was also in my movie. “The Celestine Prophecy” talks about how when we have these “coincidences”, we get a hit of energy and that often times if we run into people “coincidentally”, we each have a message for each other.
My favorite “coincidence” story goes like this: I was an out of work actor around 2002. I had recently went up on (forgot) my lines on opening night in a play I was producing and acting in. I was NOT feeling very good about my life. I went to see a play that a friend was in called “6 Degrees of Separation” by John Guare. I didn’t really want to be there, but I hung around till the end. There were 2 attractive women sitting behind me, and I remember thinking “I would have nothing in common with these women. They probably think I’m a loser”.
After the play, I talked to my friend and she invited me out to dinner with her and her people. I REALLY didn’t want to go, but I figured I could leave at any time. When we got to dinner, it was a party of about 15 people! And 2 of the people were the 2 women that I thought I’d never have anything in common with. Oh great! And then we start going around the table introducing ourselves and telling everyone “what we’re up to”. My worst nightmare! And then something shifted. The 1st of the 2 women, a pretty brunette said that she was an actress. I’d figured they were both in business. So, we had at least one thing in common. Then she said she’d recently done a play called “Fuddy Meers”, which I had also acted in. I felt myself start to relax a bit. Then the next woman, an attractive redhead, started talking. I thought, “there’s no way we’re gonna have anything in common”. She was NOT an actress. And indeed, I felt we had nothing in common.
What happened next blew me away. The introductions came around to me. What was I going to say? I wasn’t doing anything at the time. I felt like a big old failure. The only thing I could say for myself was, “Well, I just moved to the city”. “Oh yeah, where?”, someone commented. “16th and 3rd”. My friend perked up: “SHE (her daughter in law) lives on 16th and 3rd.” “Which building”, someone asked. “I live in the Washington Irving building.” “I live in that building”, said the pretty redhead. “No way, what are the chances!” My whole body started to percolate with energy. My depression had transmuted into excitement. Someone asked, “What floor do you live on?” I replied, “I live on the 10th floor”. “SHE lives on the 10th floor”, someone retorted. “WTF?!” It turns out she lived RIGHT ACROSS THE HALL FROM ME! I literally got up out of my chair and started running around the restaurant. The whole table was in shock. Out of 8 million or so people in the city of New York, what are the chances that a woman I thought I’d have zero in common with was actually my neighbor?! On that night, I knew, evidentially, that there was some kind of quantum order to the universe, something magical behind the scenes of this material world. Sometimes I think I ought not even talk about it. And then, I think, “Yeah, but then how will we all know how very connected we are!”.
There’s a sad addendum to this story that I’d be remiss to leave out. About 10 years after that night, I spoke to my friend who had been acting in the show, and she shared with me that the pretty redhead (her daughter in law) had been found dead in a trash compactor in a NYC apartment. The circumstances of her death had not be solved. This was a shock to me, as I thought about that magical night that we realized we were all so connected. The only thing I can say about that sad ending, unfortunately, evidentially, it seems another law of the universe is that there’s a dark side to every light, a shadow with every sun, and death with every life. #RIPLARA
Dave Rosenberg (Writer/Producer of "The Reunion")
