Is a "fateful encounter" truly a coincidence? A story about the structure of how circumstances rearrange themselves

The phrase "fateful encounter" is often used as romantic rhetoric.

However, people who have encounters they reflect on and think, "What if I hadn't met that person?" don't feel that the encounter was just a coincidence. It's too perfectly timed to be called a coincidence. Nor can it be said that they actively created it.

There's a structural fact there.

Why are encounters "indescribable"?

Something that cannot be fully grasped, whether in probability theory or the law of attraction

Some people say that encounters are a matter of probability. If you interact with many people, you'll eventually meet someone fate has in store for you. This is only half of the correct explanation. That's because probability theory cannot explain why a specific person appears at a specific juncture.

Some people call it the Law of Attraction, saying you can bring things to you if you wish for them. This contains an element of truth, but it's overly mystified. If meetings can be created by the active efforts of the person wishing, why is it that "meetings you weren't wishing for at all" often become more decisive?

Both of them fail to grasp the structural characteristics of their encounter.

It's not me who's moving.

A structure where the side of the stage is rearranged.

The common structure of fated encounters is as follows:

The person being met isn't actively doing anything. They aren't proactively moving. Despite this, the arrangement of relationships, opportunities, and obstacles shifts, ultimately connecting me with someone in the direction I wanted to go.

What's moving here isn't us. It's the situation, the relational field, that's moving.

This doesn't mean that I'm not doing anything. Even though it may look like I'm not moving, I'm performing an important function. That is to actively maintain a stance of not over-determining the situation.

If you strongly establish boundaries like "You should meet this kind of person" or "You must be like this," people and opportunities that don't fit into those boundaries won't even be able to approach you. Conversely, if you loosen those boundaries and don't cloud your surroundings, you open up space for things to come to you.

What does it mean to prepare the ground?

Do not over-prepare, over-expect, or over-analyze.

Decisive encounters are not the result of active searching.

It's something that comes from you when we've set the stage.

To get organized isn't about actively preparing something. Rather, it's the opposite: not over-preparing, not having excessive expectations, and not over-interpreting.

If the stage is transparent, there's room for something to enter.

If the atmosphere is cloudy, even if something approaches, it will pass by unnoticed.

The true nature of fate

A period of not being overly fixated can lead to new encounters.

Is a "fateful encounter" truly a coincidence? It is not a coincidence. However, it is not something that was actively sought out. It is an event with a unique structure where the "place" itself moves.

Moments that remain as pivotal encounters when you look back on your life. Often, there's a period where you weren't "excessively determined."

That might be the true nature of "destiny."

↓Murakami's Second Paper, "A Structural Theory of Origins," is here↓

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