I’m going to go ahead and fly out to California in the morning, so I have to leave with something so profound that you can think about it for an entire week.
I don’t believe in coincidence. It’s not that I think there’s some consciousness out there setting up fancy little scenarios that make you think “that was weird.” I just think that our capacity to understand the universe is extremely limited.
When an event happens that we call a coincidence, it’s either something completely meaningless that our mind draws false connections with, or we have a sense that there is a connection, but lack the capacity or ability to perceive it’s cause or meaning.
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That brings me to the biggest ‘coincidence’ within 100,000,000 miles. Our perfect solar eclipses are almost infinitely improbable. The sun and moon have nearly identical angular sizes when viewed from earth. The sun is 400 times wider than the moon, but also 400 times farther away. There’s no reason for this. Beyond that, like humans, these near perfect eclipses are only a temporary phenomenon. The moon is literally inching away from earth. Within 50 million years our perfect eclipses will be a thing of the past. That’s a blink of an eye.
As far as space and time go, we are incredibly lucky to be able to witness this. I hate to sound like an asshole, but the whole thing reminds me of an old Buddhist teaching. The story has to do with the incredible ‘coincidence’ that we exist at all.
“Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there.
A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north.
And suppose a blind turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years.
Now what do you think – Would that blind turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?”
“It would be a sheer coincidence, Lord, that the blind turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole.”
“It’s likewise a sheer coincidence that one obtains the human state….”
I have no idea if eclipses are just pure chance, or if they have any fundamental reason for being that I can’t comprehend. Is it natural that they’d exist at the same time as us? Is there any connection at all? Who knows?
Whatever the meaning(lessness) no one can argue that they haven’t shaped our own history. Through time, eclipses have been both feared and revered. Battles have been fought or stopped because of them. Mathematics have been created to predict them. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was proven by one.
In some Star Trek style interplanetary style federation of civilizations, this could be earth’s big tourist draw. But until then, here’s an eclipse calendar. Go see one before you die.
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