Coincidences or Attraction?

“Were these coincidences or was the Law of Attraction at work?” That’s the principle that we attract what we think about, whether positive or negative. There have been many occasions in my life when extraordinary synchronicities have occurred and I have asked myself that question. Here are a couple of quick anecdotes that spring to mind, then I’ll give you my thoughts on why they occurred.

My Spitfire Story

Back in 2002, I went on a holiday where I found myself retracing my family origins. The initial driver was that I was attending a home football match at my beloved Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium in Manchester, but as my Father was born and raised in Manchester, I then had the urge to seek out his old school. I found myself there and by coincidence, I had a conversation with the Caretaker, who upon hearing that my Dad had attended there in the 1930’s, produced a journal that was a sort of visitor’s book, containing comments from some of the teachers who had taught there back in that pre-War era. He allowed me to take it back to my Dad in Perth, Australia with the promise that we would post it back. Sure enough, it transpired that Dad recognised some of his former teachers and was able to write to the Caretaker with some anecdotes.

After continuing on to my Mother’s childhood area of Chester, and catching up with some cousins I hadn’t seen since my childhood visits, I travelled to Malta, where my Father had served during the second World War as an Aircraft Engineer, fixing Hurricanes and Spitfires. I went to look for the airfield where he had first been stationed as a 19-year old Flight Sergeant in the RAF at Takali in Malta. The airfield was so longer active, but in its place I found a Museum with loads of War memorabilia and artefacts.

Flashback to my parents in Perth going on a bus trip for the day with the Retired Servicemen’s League. During a comfort stop, while my Father went off to the gents, my Mum, as she always did, began talking with a stranger, another lady on the bus, who was also waiting for her husband to return. During their introductions, they realised that both husbands had served in Malta, with her partner being an Australian pilot who had flown Spitfires. They then introduced their returning husbands, who to their surprise found that they had served in the same squadron. When they went home they both looked up their photo albums and found each other’s images in the squadron photos of the day. They became good buddies until they both passed away several years later. There were several coincidences in that that they had served together, that they had gone on that same trip in Perth that day, and that their wives had randomly conversed.

So, when I walked into that museum in Takali, imagine my surprise when I entered the hangar to find a fully intact Spitfire aircraft. Dad was still alive at that time back in their retirement village in Perth, so I rang him from Malta. He asked me to read him the squadron markings. It turned out that not only had he worked on that very plane, but his buddy Ed had also flown it!

I’ve inherited my Mother’s trait of talking with random strangers and I struck up a conversation with Joe, the Curator of the Museum. I told him of my phone call to my Dad and he was really interested. I connected him with my Father and when they corresponded after that, Dad was able to answer a lot of questions, tell anecdotes and help identify people in photographs. It was a real win-win outcome that I know gave my Dad a lot of joy, because despite the horrors of war and the relentless bombings and starvation they had endured, there were also a lot of fond memories of the characters who shared those experiences.

What I found even more intriguing was the number of near-misses that my Father had, like for example when he was on duty when his billet was bombed. Had he been off duty he would have died that day. They were working 12 hour shifts, so it was a 50:50 chance.

On another occasion he stopped to talk with a person up a telegraph pole whilst walking across the airfield. A bomb landed exactly where he would have been had he not stopped for that conversation. I reflected on this at his funeral, passing at the distinguished age of 90, with my three siblings, his multiple grand-children and great grand-children, none of whom would have been here today had he perished at the hands of German or Italian bombers.

Was that all a coincidence, or did the Universe (or whatever your version of spirituality is called) have some grander design in mind as to why these people’s lives should all entwine in such a way? I believe that each of us has a soul contract to fulfill and that we are here to learn lessons and to help those whom we influence in some way, to also do the same.

The Oxford Gentry and Jam-Makers

The above story was about my second visit to Malta. I had first been there on holiday from our home in Jersey, Channel Islands as a child of about eleven, with my parents, as my Father nostalgically reconnected with the little country that had made major impacts on his younger life – impacts of war carnage, starvation, heroism and the extremes of human experiences.

Whilst playing in the hotel swimming pool, I had befriended a couple of young lads from Oxford in England. Our parents also then became friends and we spent evenings dining together and enjoying the local bands in the bar. Rick had been a professional entertainer and my Dad had played the accordion in the RAF and had progressed to the organ, so they shared a common interest in music. At the end of the holiday we said our goodbyes, thinking it probably unlikely that we’d ever meet again.

A year or two later, we were travelling from Jersey to visit my brother in Australia, but had taken a detour to catch up with some old friends in Kent, near London. We decided quite randomly to drive up to Hendon as my Dad wanted to visit the RAF Aircraft Museum. As we walked around a corner in one of the hangars, in another of these bizarre coincidences, who should we bump into but this entire family from Oxford that we had befriended in Malta!

They had equally randomly driven down from Oxford for the day to help their eldest son find accommodation near his University and had also decided to visit this Museum. Of course we all went for a coffee and a long chat. This resulted in them inviting my parents to visit them in Oxford whenever they would next be in England.

Several years later, my parents, who by then were living in Perth, Australia did exactly that and were astonished when Rick appeared in a gold Rolls Royce. The locals doffed their caps to him as he drove by like country gentry. The reason was that this family owned the strawberry farm that created a huge amount of employment in the village and they were the major supplier for the world-famous Robertson’s Jams. That friendship and their holiday experiences would not have occurred except for the coincidence of visiting Hendon that day.

Coincidences, Destiny or Some Kind of Greater Purpose?

I’m sure you will have your own stories of synchronicity in your life. There will be people you have met with some kind of bizarre link to your own life, your family or your friends and there will be moments where you can reflect on how a slightly different decision that you made will have led to potentially a completely different outcome. If so, you may enjoy the movie,  ‘Sliding Doors’.

I could recount stories all day of such happenings and even my own fateful, near-death moments when scuba diving, flying or even driving – some of which are told in my book, ‘If Life’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Well’.

Whenever I encounter such serendipitous instances, I pause to reflect on them and I ask myself, “What is the Universe teaching me here? What new skill, knowledge or revelatory breakthrough am I supposed to learn from and apply from this situation?”

As the famous coach and author, Tony Robbins said, “Nothing in life has any meaning except the meaning we give it.”

I especially like to apply this quote to any of life’s setbacks or disappointments, which has stood me in good stead for bouncing back from perceived adversities.

I’ll finish with a mantra from my Mother, Vera Inman, who used to say this whenever things didn’t go as planned and this positive mindset of surrendering to the Universal Power or Higher Consciousness (and the Universal Law of Attraction that was enacted) manifested itself usually with happier and more fulfilling outcomes than what had originally been expected…

“Well, it obviously just wasn’t meant to be, but there will be something better around the corner.”
~ Vera Inman