When I was in university, we played the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game. A take on the six degrees of separation idea, originally set out in the 1920s, we worked hard to connect actors or musicians of any stripe back to Kevin Bacon in just six steps.
It was fun back then, and entertained us for many a beer-filled evening.
Recently though, a series of seemingly coincidental connections has me wondering if it really is possible to connect anyone to anyone else in the world in just that few steps. And are coincidental meetings really coincidental?
Through a colleague, a hospitable family, assorted school friends from long ago and … well, let me start at the beginning.
In 1985, during my Rotary Exchange year, I became good friends with a schoolmate in Istanbul. As fate would have it, we sadly lost touch with each other in the years that followed. During that year, the exchange students visited many different Turkish cities, staying with Rotarian hosts – often families with children near our ages. On one trip, we visited Bursa, and I stayed with a lovely family for 2 or 3 nights; that family’s son drove us around and helped show us many places. It was a lovely visit.
Fast forward a few decades, and my urge to visit Istanbul again was growing. It so happened, I had discovered a colleague who was from Turkey. He helped me remember a little of the language and gave me tips on a city that was clearly going to be different from the one in my memory. He left the company not long after that and we kept saying we should connect for coffee sometime, but never did.
When I went back to Istanbul a couple of years later with my daughter (thanks to a business trip that got me as far as Bucharerst), we stayed with a good friend, who tagged me in a Facebook photo on our first day there. The old colleague reached out. We were in the same city, staying mere blocks apart. Our Canadian coffee date turned into çay on the Bosphorus that very afternoon!Another year or so later, we realized a mutual connection. The colleague and the son of that Bursa host family had gone to high school together!
Around the same time – and stay with me here – another Turkish schoolmate, who I’d reconnected with on Facebook, commented on a photo of that first schoolmate – who happened to be less than 20 km up the road from my Toronto-suburb house at the time of posting. Unfortunately, she didn’t see my “You’re so close, we must meet” message until too late, but at least we were in each other’s circles again.
On a third trip to Istanbul (yes, three in four years – I got a bit carried away!), we finally saw each other in person and I learned that she and her husband were looking at immigrating to either the US or Canada, and that the Toronto area was high on the list. They came to visit later that spring, and when paperwork made its way through the system, came to live here in the fall. Needless to say, I’ve seen much more of them since then!
But the final two coincidences came the other day when we realized that her husband and that colleague from a few years ago also have friend in common. And then this weekend, the colleague visited my hometown, some 300 km away. It’s enough to make my head spin.
It reminds me of times when friends have finished my sentences, or I’ve finished theirs. Or when we’ve said the same thing at the same time, and then dissolved into laughter. Or when I’ve run into someone on a busy city street where two people have no business finding themselves at exactly the same place in exactly the same time. Or discovering that a university friend sent her daughter to the same camp as mine – and turns out to have been a counsellor there, in her youth, with a friend I met when my youngest was born. I have often shaken my head in wonder that any of this is even possible, let alone happening to me.
Coincidence? Some grander plan? I’m not sure, but I am thankful for all the meetings, and connections in life that keep it interesting!
