I used to be obsessed with fate, of marching towards grand and inevitable destinies. Now it's the randomness of life that fascinates me, how meaning is an emergent property of infinite coincidences colliding.
Life doesn't make the promises stories do. The dependability of everything coming together at the end, rules that disallow the existential terror of a sudden car crash before I've achieved any of my dreams. It lacks the neatness of a crafted narrative, a protagonist and their poetic foil. But sparks come to life through the imperfection of the flint and steel, in the roughness of uncertainty.
A single “hello” can alter a life. My friend's aunt is now dating a centi-millionaire, and they met because she crossed the streets of New York to say hi to a cute guy. My parents met on the train. Two completely unconnected people happened to catch the same train at the same time, going in the same direction, walking to the same cabin, sitting across from each other, and decided to talk to each other. Threads spinning in space suddenly forever entangled.
I have only known life, so I can't help this sense of pre-determination about my existence. But I wasn't destined to be born. My existence, every existence - everything everywhere everywhen - is a cosmic game of chance. Life is too big to control, too complex to predict. All we can do is navigate it the best we can, a sailboat in a stormy sea. 1
Isn't that scary? Isn't that freeing?
Life feels so small, so… random, but also so irreplaceable. Every life has a million little shards, the accumulation of coincidences unmatched by any other life.
I make my ramen the way a friend taught me in eleventh grade. Every fall, I listen to a playlist made for me by a boy I drove across the border to hook up with. I eat sushi because a girl who won’t talk to me anymore made me try it, and Indian food because my best friend’s parents ordered for me before I knew what I liked. There are movies I love because someone I loved loved them first. I am a mosaic of everyone I’ve ever loved, even for a heartbeat2.
Love tumbles across people and into the future. A story someone told me a week ago resurfaces to give me direction now, music a friend sent me leads to a bond with a stranger years later. A compliment over a sticker, a conversation about a book I love, a lasting connection. All because someone loved something first.
I imagine each of these small interactions as a collision. Some scrape by, forgotten. Some blur right past each other, a glance that could've turned to love in a different universe. Some collide head-on, irrevocably changing the trajectory of your life. An apple that fell on your head, a swipe the algorithm put in your lap.
Luck is just when a collision sends you in a better direction than where you were going. Every time you go to a coffee shop, every time you talk to someone, every question you ask and answer you give, you’re flipping a coin that could lead to something bigger.
Here's the key part: The universe is a casino where the gamblers win. The coin is stacked in favour of luck - each collision has a far better chance of turning out well than worse.
Humans generally all want good things. According to the FBI, about 0.0006% of the population is a serial killer. According to me, about ~100% of people want to love and be loved. If you get that unlucky, tell God it's on me.
Humans are story machines, so there seems to be this permanent quest to explain everything wrong with our lives in this neat narrative. What's wrong with online dating? What's up with the mental illness epidemic? Why are you lonely? Well, it all started when x happened to y…
Social media is the go-to scapegoat, but I don't think it's the cause of these problems.
Yes, Social media is shallow and full of comparison and people living happier, healthier lives than I am. But I don't know how much of the problem is that they're living better lives, or that I'm just not living a good one. Is comparison the symptom or the cause of an unhappy life?
Our society is structured all backwards. We are by default in isolation and have to seek connection. Humans avoid suffering, but now connection requires suffering in new, artificial ways: leaving everything you know for a new job; hundreds of swipes on Hinge competing against thousands of others; an offline and online life performing for each other, being the joke and the audience simultaneously.
History is not a narrative orbiting a select few, but the cumulative sum of every choice each individual makes3. And now these choices aren't just being determined by politics and war. They're being warped behind the scenes by teams of data scientists. The sound of a notification, the smoothness of a swipe, the new vector embedding for your algorithm.
Each invisible update makes it ever so less miserable to be lying at home alone, and ever less necessary to say hi to that cute guy across the street (who, remember, might be a billionaire). I can't help but feel like this is where the dangers of social media really lie.
Boomer take, but these little collisions accumulate into meaningful differences in life. Most sparks flash into oblivion, but how else will you find the one to start the fire? It feels so silly to say that not talking to each other on the train or elevator is the sole cause of a serious mental health issue epidemic, and it's not. But when I look back, I am always just one coincidence away from having never known the people who give my life meaning - a single hi, a single night of going to bed early, a single judgement.
So often do I think: “I wish I knew you sooner”. So often is it my fault that I didn't.
Humans tend to be happiest in environments where people are squeezed into repeated collisions like college. I know people 5 years out of college who are still cripplingly lonely because they haven't adapted their social behaviour from college.
While hitting the same number of collisions is impossible, we can at least proactively increase them. And there is a certain art to it. We can somewhat influence the quality of these collisions. I can only list my own mistakes here:
Trust your friends' tastes. Your friends are cool. They probably have cool friends. I don't know why I wasn't more proactive in meeting mutual friends. Crawl up the friend chain.
Curiosity and the social skills to go deeper push you towards a more head-on collision, whereas judgment is a form of distancing.
Treat interactions a little more seriously. Each question and each answer, a single branch down a conversation can unlock a meaningful connection. We don't need that many meaningful connections to be happy. It is stunning how disinterested people are in meeting new people - how they let social anxiety or small talk get in the way of infinite possibilities. Curiosity might be one of the most undervalued traits.
Be yourself. People told me this for as long as I can remember, but I never did it because I never understood why it was important. In fact, I became pretty good at determining what someone was like and matching that, so I was at least a lot more generally likeable than my default self.
But I was sacrificing quality for quantity. More people like you, but they're not the right people 4.
There are levels to being yourself, but I think the most important thing is to signal who you are and what you are looking for.
Having my soul splayed out on substack is pretty scary - there are certainly people I know who would find it cringe - but it's also a beacon for people like me. If someone finds my writing interesting enough to read, there's a good chance we get along in real life too 5. So if you made it this far, we should hang out :)
I think science makes us feel like we can conquer life like we have conquered the sea, with mechanised motors and metal hulls. That’s what productivity gurus and Huberman podcasts feed on (Both of which I must confess to have consumed). But life is an art, not a science.
Is one of my favourite quotes of all time from Tumblr?
✨yes✨
Word-smithed quote from “A Promised Land” memoir by Barack Obama
Being generally likeable is important because it'll get you into more opportunities for collisions such as parties and group hangouts that extend beyond your usual circle. Be someone people feel comfortable inviting because you're going to represent whoever invited you
Also, judgment is flawed, so you need to know people better than you think you do before knowing if it'll work out.
I was writing about this and then realised the original sentiment came from one of Ava from Bookbear’s pieces.
Your writing hits every time. I don't know how you do it. Like this: "But sparks come to life through the imperfection of the flint and steel, in the roughness of uncertainty." wow...
I found your comments on social media especially interesting. I agree that comparison on social media is not necessarily the cause of an unhappy life and am definitely guilty of blaming social media when I'm just not living the life I want to live.
And the importance of curiosity in giving those sparks, those collisions, a real chance to live on is while also being yourself...two points I'll be carrying with me moving on!