Whatever happens...happens for a reason

Have you ever come across an incident in your life where you felt...

Oh my God...What a coincidence !!

or something like..

this is what I call perfect timing..I'm glad I was at the place at the right time

Many of us stop thinking beyond that point...but i try hard to brood over those kind of incidents...whether it really was just a "coincidence" or was it "meant to happen". There's a thin line between these two statements but following either one of them puts you in totally two different categories. So if you don't analyze...good for you...life is cool..If you analyze, you waste more time and effort and break your head like me who ended up writing this post. So here's a small incident which happened this thanksgiving weekend where me, my better half, my Kabob mein haddi bro-in-law and our two friends planned a trip to Alcatraz.

We had bought 5 tickets for Alcatraz Cruise for the 10:30 am slot on Saturday. And in the last minute there was a small problem and my bro-in-law couldn't make it. He had to go bring his girlfriend from another place to San Francisco and hence had to skip this. Priority wise that was obviously more important. So we dropped him at Central station and came to Alcatraz @ 10 am. Now came the real problem. We somehow had to sell this $25 ticket. But who would go alone to Alcatraz ?? There were many couples going, but there were absolutely none going alone. We tried asking the people at the booth whether they can sell it and give us the money, but unfortunately the answer was NO. So naturally we had to do the famous "dus ka thees, dus ka thees" in front of the ticket counter, which surprisingly they were cool with.

It was 10:15 am and the ticket counter said "All tickets sold for today", which was very good news for us as the probability of us selling the tickets increased. So we saw many couples coming and going back disappointed. We tried selling tickets to them, but in vain as they wanted more. Our friends said they would drop out so that we can sell 3 tickets, but I was sure that there gotta be a better way. And then there was a final call for boarding and all our hopes went down when we had to ditch the ticket and go in. We almost let it go when right at that time I saw this pretty lady standing in front of the Cruise, watching the ticket counter lady yelling "All tickets have been sold for today..come back tomorrow".

We didn't know if she needed ticket or not, but looking at her we somehow knew that she was disappointed for not able to get to Alcatraz island today. So my wife at once went to her and asked if she needs one, and you must have seen the happiness in her face right at that moment. It brightened up so much that I had to wear my glares immediately :). No seriously..she became so happy that she was ready to pay any amount to get the ticket. But we being very nice people, just wanted the actual price. And finally we were able to sell our single ticket. You know what she said when she got it ? She said " there's someone always there looking out for us. " I know we've heard this many a times from many sources, but at that moment, for me it meant something. I completely agreed to her.

Now going back to my thoughts, should we consider this as a mere coincidence ? or a perfect timing ? All the while I was wondering what if my brother in law hadn't gone to get his girlfriend ? We would all have happily gone to Alcatraz, but what would have happened to this lady who wouldn't have got a ticket ? What if we weren't standing at that place right at that time ? What if we had gone inside and not cared for selling the tickets ? So in a way it was good the way it ended. Everyone got what they wanted.

Whatever happened didn't happen according to our plan, but it all still looked like a perfect plan. How can that happen ? Whose plan is that ? These questions really bug me. I have a hard time always to accept certain things which don't have proof...or I believe in "A Posteriori" rather than "A Priori" judgement. But situations like these make me believe that there's someone beyond us, beyond this world who controls us, who has a plan laid out for us and we are mere chess coins being moved here and there to get the game moving. Now thats good right. I feel good in believing in something. However I'm also a huge fan of the more believable Darwin and his famous theory. Very contradicting statements right ?

So thats why at the end of the day I feel its better not to dig too much into these incidents, rather just accept that Whatever happens...happens for a reason....and leave it there.