What a Coincidence! by Susan M. Watkins

[Deb]

Complete title:

What a Coincidence! the wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life by Susan M Watkins, author of Conversations with Seth

A quick and enjoyable read, my paperback copy has 144 pages plus 9 pages of end notes. As a used book, it cost me 75¢ plus shipping, certainly worth it!

Susan was a dedicated note-taker and would write down her dreams every morning and events she considered to involve coincidences in journals, so she had a lot of information from which to draw. In this book she goes into a lot of detail of several of these coincidences. Some of them don't seem all that significant to me and it felt like she was making connections that really weren't necessarily there. But she does ask a lot of good questions.

Some stories are pretty amazing, such as in Chapter 12 An Odyssey of Letters, Coincidence Illuminating the Past. Susan was working on Speaking of Jane Roberts in early November 1999. Rob had given Susan a collection of letters between Walter Zeh, Jane's first husband and himself (Rob). They were in contact after Jane's death (oh how I'd love to see those letters!). Susan was considering using excerpts from the letters in her Speaking book, and wanted to contact Walter to clear it with him first. But she wasn't sure he was still alive, and while she wrote a letter to him, she kept putting off mailing it. (She demonstrates in a couple of stories that not acting on impulse can produce coincidences as easily as acting on impulses.)

Long story shorter, she ends up not contacting Walter after a couple of false starts. She found out later that Walter had died November 11, 1999, about the same time she was considering contacting him. Susan's book was published in fall of 2000. I read it many years ago, but I don't recall excerpts from the letters. I'll need to take another look at that.

Then in April 2001, she received a letter from Karl Zeh, one of Walter's sons. He came across Susan's book in searching the 'net. He hadn't read the book, but wanted to know more about his father and asked Susan if Jane had ever talked about Walter. Walter had never talked about Jane or their time together. Susan ended up sending him copies of the letters. Karl was thrilled and later said "the letters contained many details of Walt's early life that his family had never known before... a profoundly moving experience 'beyond words'".

Which got Susan to wondering about her own father. One thing lead to another (coincidence after coincidence) and she ends up finding some correspondence between her father and his childhood friend. That was one of my favorite stories in the book.

So, as I wrote in the beginning, an enjoyable read. Not earth-shattering, no major conclusions, but the stories, Susan's note-keeping and questions have inspired me to look closer at events in my own life. Ideally, I want to get back to keeping a dream journal, and maybe a coincidence journal as well. The last chapter of the book was a how-to list for exploring our own coincidences.

I also felt a connection to Susan, in that she was a nice person and someone that could have been a friend had I lived near her. I don't usually feel that way about authors, but she has a warm, frank and yet personal way of writing and her book seems more like correspondence than a dry accounting of events.