Primrose Road

If I flip a coin fifty times, that coin could land heads-up fifty times in a row. The Law of Truly Large Numbers reminds us that events we perceive as unusual/impossible/miraculous are actually more commonplace, and more possible, than we might think. It would thus be rather narcissistic for me to ask why a coin has landed heads-up fifty times in a row, or to ask whether that series of events was a sign designed personally for me or anyone else.

Last night, I attended a Limmud salon (a Jewish learning event) that explored the ways in which we could "interpret" everyday life using the same methods that Torah scholars use to interpret the Torah. I go to these events even though I don't believe in anything supernatural; they're interesting cultural experiences and they allow me to play fun ideology-critiquing games in the grad student brain that I'm pretty sure I wear outside my head nowadays.

The teacher leading the session identified two views of uncanny repetitions in everyday life:
(1) the Biblical, which says that the spiritual is in everything from food to writing to toothpaste to coin-tosses, and that everything happens for a reason;
(2) the academic, which says "shit happens."

Here is what I did not say: "Those views both sound awfully complacent."

I also did not say that I don't know of many academic types who would shrug their shoulders, say "shit happens," and walk away. Instead, many might examine how and why we tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason as a way of keeping ourselves complacent. And if we seek to identify repetitions in life experiences for the purpose of interpreting those repetitions as though they were repeated words in a verse from the Torah, perhaps it's because we narcissistically dream of a personal god and a world that exists for us, a life that is meant to be read, interpreted, annotated like the Bible or a closet drama.

Let's talk Hamlet for a moment now (since, after all, all life experience and knowledge is contained in that play ... or not): After witnessing Ophelia's burial, which I suspect crushes him, our favorite Nice Danish Boy tells Horatio that he's sleepless, torn apart over what's happened. But then, he once again proves himself entirely self-absorbed: "There's a divinity that shapes our ends," he (famously) says, "Rough-hew them how we will" (5.2.10-11). Hamlet turns to God, Providence and destiny in order to absolve himself of the specific, fatal failures that lead to Polonius' and Ophelia's deaths. If there is a fatal flaw in the character of Hamlet, it is his willingness to attribute his failures to fate, suppressing what he knows in favor what what can all-too-easily be believed.