This Summer, while in Washington, D.C., I felt compelled to go to the National Portrait Gallery. Shortly after walking in, a woman who was dressed as if she worked there politely approached me in the hallway to discuss the way people have energy and how seeming “coincidences” happen. No, she did not strike me as disturbed and such things have happened before. She then asked if I had ever read the novel “The Celestine Prophecy” (James Redfield, 1993). I said that I had not but that I had heard of it. We spoke a little more and then went on our respective ways. It was an unusual encounter, particularly because I had felt compelled to go there, and so I decided that I should read the book. Before I could read Celestine, however, I finished reading recently-published “Fluke” by Brian Klaas (2024). It is sub-titled “Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters”. I will look at both books together.

While I join the criticisms of Celestine that (despite being a #1 New York Times Bestseller) it is a poorly-conceived and -executed attempt by the author to advance his personal philosophy of nine or ten “Insights,” what I got from it instead was a story where “coincidence” or “happenstance” play crucially important roles. So, too, with Fluke, which is not a novel but a book that makes the case that everything that has ever happened, is happening, and will happen matters tremendously and that it is all connected. There are no “flukes,” as we call them. My big criticism of Klaas is that he comes to the conclusion that because everything works together there is no “meaning” or “reason” behind it all. More than once in his chapter titled “Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason” I wrote down, “How do you know?” in response to his claims that events lack meaning or reason. He also rejects free will, but fails to fully address compatibilism which is a compromise between free will and determinism (a position I hold). Despite these criticisms, there are some essential points to these books.

Everything, everything, is connected. This is true despite what kind of meaning we may ascribe to events or whether they are “good” or “bad.” Klaas points out that he would not be alive and the reader would not be reading the book they hold in their hands had it not been for a tragic murder-suicide in 1905. His grandfather’s first wife was psychotic and she murdered her children and then killed herself while he was at work. The grandfather later remarried and the author’s father (and subsequently the author) was born as a result of that second marriage — one that would not have happened without the murder-suicide. It is impossible to see all ends and what they can mean and whether they are “good” or “bad.” This reminds me of the story of the old Chinese farmer whose horse ran away:

A Chinese farmer’s horse runs off.
His neighbors come by and say, “That’s too bad!”
He responds, “Maybe.”
The horse returns with six wild horses. He has his horse back plus more.
His neighbors come by and say, “That’s great!
He responds, “Maybe.”
His oldest son tries to tame one of the wild horses and is thrown and breaks his leg.
His neighbors come by and say, “That’s too bad!”
He responds, “Maybe.”
The army comes around to draft young men, but they bypass his son because of his leg.
His neighbors come by and say, “That’s great!
He responds, “Maybe.”

We could say that the farmer’s son was not taken by the army (“good”) because his horse ran off (“bad”). There are consequences to every action, and we can try to label them as “intended,” “unintended,” “good,” “bad,” etc. But those labels, which are judgments, are problematic because we can not see all ends.

Again, Klaas dismisses the notion of things happening for a reason or having meaning because everything is connected. To him, this means nothing is special, yet his approach is an optimistic one. I appreciate his optimism that we should take heart in everything and that life unfolds in a remarkably connected way and that itself is beautiful, but reject his idea that this necessarily means there is not some grand meaning behind it. We simply can not know. We lack that capacity in light of connections that he admits are infinite. Our lack of capacity for insight does not mean there is nothing there. If we can not see or measure a force in the universe, does that mean it does not exist? I acknowledge that a criticism of this would be that if we can not understand it, how does it matter to us? My response is that there are moments of perception, serendipity, “coincidence.” Ones that may have great import in our lives and ones that may not. But they happen. To me, they are hints that there is more at play beyond our understanding. This alone may matter tremendously.

I was meant to go to the National Portrait Gallery, I was meant to run in to the mysterious stranger, I was meant to read these books. And that is a very encouraging thought.