Brain Food #586

Worldly coincidences

Thoughts of the day

On this day, in 1918, a cook in Kansas became the first documented case of Spanish flu (although documentation of medical cases has vastly improved since, and, alas this date varies across sources).

On the same day, last year, the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

The word ‘coincidence’ once again springs to mind. There are meaningful personal coincidences, which can act as a form of internal alignment to our journey, a sign that we are on the right path, that we will meet ourselves at the end. And there are worldly coincidences, like today’s.

This, of course, is a coincidence related to history, which famously repeats itself, although Mark Twain argued that “History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” signalling that no two identical events will ever occur, but we may come across echoes of past moments.

When poetry rhymes, the sound on which each line ends prepares the reader for what will come next. We may be able to guess the word at the end of a subsequent line, but more often than not, that is pure serendipity. Rhyming can also be surprising, unpredictable. Each line brings with it something new.

And in the rhyming of history, we cannot predict the next words that will be written, but we can still look at previous lines, take what we have learned, and be more prepared.

Between 1918 and today, there were three more viral outbreaks that were then declared as pandemics - these began on dates unrelated to each other. Though it may sound like it, we are not entirely hopeless as humanity; we are just given more chances to learn through problems that are as timeless as they are universal.