Do you think that if you are looking for something, you will find it sooner or later? I am not talking about envisioning a suitcase full of money and eventually it will show up, but if you try that, let me know how it goes! Nor do I mean that you find everything you think of, blimey that would be a hectic time wouldn’t it.
I mean if you are thinking of someone lots they might show up in the same aisle as you at the grocery store, or they may call. Have you ever called in on someone and they said ‘I was just thinking about you’. That has happened to me many times.
I like the heart rock search as a great example. Have you ever found heart shaped rocks on the beach or in the fields? Have you looked? People have collections of heart rocks and I always thought it so amazing that they are just found, right there, under our noses. I had never seen a heart rock and I am always looking for cool things on the beach or even just on a path, so why don’t I just see them? Well, I suppose because I am not looking for them.
While we were on holiday a couple of years ago, I thought I would try and find some heart rocks, and I did. I saw heart shaped rocks, seaweed and shells. How did that happen? Is Cape Cod the mecca for heart shaped flotsam and jetsam? No, I was looking. Looking for hearts and I found them.
I still find heart shapes all over the place, in the creek, in the woods, leaves and rocks, even a heart shaped puddle once!
Creek glass and a heart shaped rock.
Talking of the creek, we have been in it lots of times, paddling about and helping clean it up during the annual stream clean held locally. Never found anything of any interest. Until we found a couple of old bottles in the woods then a nail varnish bottle from the 1940’s and random marbles in the creek. So, we started looking, searching for cool stuff. Guess what? We found it and we still find bits and bobs all the time.
Nail Varnish bottle and shoe polish bottle both from the 1940’s
So far we have found lots of shards of stream glass, pieces of old pots and crockery (we are still looking for the cutlery), marbles, ornaments, whole pots and a whole jug, more bottles and some buttons.
How do we suddenly see these things? They must have been there all along, we just weren’t looking. Once we started to find marbles, we joked about finding a marble every time we went to the stream and we really do, almost every time we look, one of us finds a marble.
Once I found a whole bowl, a small bowl, but it was intact and in good condition. I was very happy with this find and popped it in the bag to give it a nice clean up when we got home. Only a week or two later, I found another one, exactly the same, also intact. What a lovely coincidental find.
Twin bowls and the creek marbles.
Two terracotta bowls
Another time I had just watched a film called Time Zero, about the demise of the Polaroid and the rise of the Impossible Project and I got to thinking that I would pull out my Polaroid camera and grab some film for it. The very next day what did I find in the creek bed? Three negatives all stuck together. Look like they were taken at a zoo, I wonder which one? There I was thinking of photos and film and I find these. Would you believe it?!
I wonder when this tiger had his photo taken?
Just to be clear, I am not citing voodoo or any magical powers, just wondering at life’s coincidences and enjoying them!
Does this happen to you? Pondering something in the back of your mind, and there it is!
Clare Davis Etheridge 