Accidental Meetings: Myth or Reality?

In the 21st century, we cannot face being alone for a mere hour without communicating or seeking a connection. Turning to apps such as Tinder or online assistance to find a partner has become a smartphone obsession. Newspaper ads ("searching for a blonde with size C") might seem desperate, but is logging on to Tinder and looking for a partner with the same qualities normal behavior?

I can only say that the craving for new and exciting meetings is real.

Patience is a virtue they say, but in the 21st century we forget this and grow exceedingly impatient, hurrying everything up and forcing ourselves to find a partner rather than sit back and let it happen naturally. Perhaps we should turn on our impatience at the right time in the right context. Take for example the story of Ana Kraš and Devendra Banhart. She is a photographer and furniture designer from Serbia. She was sent from one continent to another to photograph Banhart, an artist-musician living in Los Angeles, and ended up staying. After five minutes he proposed to her. They have been together ever since. The impatience to marry played its role to the best here, but no force was brought by any side of the couple to initiate such encounter. It was an accidental meeting with a future at its finest.

What are these accidental meetings, or spontaneous attractions, with no pre-planning? Is that not the best part of meeting someone, the surprising attachment you feel after your first conversation, the intense desire to see each other again after sharing some words in between the lines, looking at each other with the still innocent eyes, with a smile you cannot explain on your lips.

You may call me sentimental for believing in serendipity, but I do not consider accidental meetings to be a myth. I believe that some can lead to a future together. I say "some", put emphasis on this word. Not every accidental meeting I've had, and I could honestly say I encounter one every few days now, will lead into the future or even into the next hour. Not all have a reliable foundation, that is true, but the ones that do last and are so good you cannot believe it was unplanned. Perhaps that is even the best thing about an accidental meeting, that it is unplanned, relaxed. It makes you believe in miracles.

You want more proof that they exist? Just tell me a place, an airplane, a hospital, a street? An airplane, a perfect place for an accidental meeting to happen when you do not even consider meeting someone. Personally I have experienced it. So have many others. Take Marsha's and Lenny's story, for example. She owns a business in Toronto and he is a long-distance truck driver in Florida. Sitting in the same aisle on a flight from Jamaica to Miami was the first spark that led to their wedding in 2011 — after losing touch for several years and then reconnecting. Yes, the reconnection did happen thanksto social media, but the connection was not created there. And that is what makes their story worth sharing without tiring of its originality.

Here's another accidental meeting. Brandi and Dustin found each other in Missouri after a car accident. She ended up marrying the volunteer firefighter who saved her. What makes this story even more intriguing is the volunteer position of the firefighter Dustin, the chance that he would not be there, at the scene of the accident, to save the wife-to-be, victim of the crash. Another story is Ashley and Danny. She was donating a kidney to Danny without knowing who he was — before they ended up falling in love and staying together. The intrigue? The fact that "fewer than 200 living donors are like Ashley, with no connection or relation to the person...".

A complete stranger at one moment can become the closest person you could even consider someone unrelated to you to be. I believe in these encounters, I have my reasons to, and so can you or anybody else. Just let go of the subconscious demand to meet someone new and follow your intuition that this person who inexplicably grabbed your attention is going to leave an indescribable mark on your life.