Cue spooky music . . . !

I experienced an eternalist moment today.  I accompanied my son to view a flat he is thinking of buying.  The car park in front of the block of flats had numbers allocated to the flats, but there did not appear to be any visitors’ spaces.  As it was early afternoon I decided to risk using someone’s space and parked in the one labelled ‘5’.

     “What flat number are we going to view Daniel?”
     “Number 5.”

Cue spooky music . . . !

Buddhism denies the four philosophical extremes of monism, dualism, eternalism and nihilism, while recognising that all can apply temporarily, or in the moment.

I could take the view that the fact that I chose parking space number 5 without knowing we were viewing flat number 5 is a ‘sign’.  Perhaps it means that flat number 5 is meant to be.  This would be an eternalist view.

I could add weight to a view of the significance of number 5 by remembering that we live in a house that is number 5, and a friend of ours also recently moved in to a flat that is number 5 . . . 
It seems to be a natural trait of human beings to see patterns.  Whether this little occurrence of coincidence has meaning or does not have meaning, whether it is just the random chaos of the universe, or whether I had mysteriously picked up on the number of the flat through telepathy, or whatever . . . is actually irrelevant.  It is how we respond that is important.

Dan and I thought it was rather cool and slightly amusing . . .  and it was quite a nice flat.