The Science Behind CoincidenceBy Amy Paturel|Monday, August 13, 2018Pixeldreams.eu/ShutterstockIt was just a few days shy of my first Thanksgiving without my dad — at least as I’d known him. He’d hadheart surgery in January 2017, followed by complications ranging from strokes to a life-threatening bacterialinfection. The repeated assaults on his system transformed him. Last Thanksgiving, he had run circles aroundmy 3-year-old. This year, he sat motionless in a chair, unable to spoon his own mashed potatoes.I needed a distraction. So I hit eBay in search of a license plate for my boys’ transportation-themed bedroom. Idecided to look for a Massachusetts plate, because I spent a lot of time there with my dad.When the first one popped up, the numbers nearly leapt off my screen. It was a 1938 plate, the same year mydad was born, with the numbers 143264. My mom was born in February (2) of 1943, and they married in1964. I contacted the seller, who told me the plate was part of his father’s vintage collection. He hadthousands of them.“I lost my dad last December, after a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s disease,” he wrote. “He was my bestfriend. Every time I box up a plate, it kills me, but I do it for my son and nephew’s college fund.”Was it a coincidence that almost all of the numbers lined up with different aspects of my parents’ lives? Thatthe seller and I shared a yearning for dads who were no longer there? The majority of scientists say it’s simplemathematics. Some researchers subscribe to the fringe claim that invisible forces “make things happen.” Butmost camps agree such scenarios are part of our brain’s innate need to create order out of chaos — and weexperience them more often when we’re paying attention.We Are All ConnectedStumbling upon that 1938 plate at the moment I was missing my dad — and the fact that the plate led me tosomeone who was also missing his dad — isn’t a coincidence. At least according to psychiatrist BernardBeitman, a visiting psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences professor at the University of Virginia, and acoincidence researcher.
