her search for ben.
Do soul mates and fate exist? Does everything happen for a reason?
Enter Molly Gilford. I read about her in today’s Rocky Mountain News. It’s a long story, but here’s the meat: she’s had wedding dreams about a mysterious man for the last few years, and has set out to find him in the real world, bent on the fact that he does exist, and that these coincidental experiences are leading her closer to him. She’s named this mystery man, Ben.
Her search has led her through a whole slew of synchronistic events: a strangely familiar face on the subway, an infinity-shaped onion ring, coworkers saying inexplicable things, a free wedding dress, key chains falling off kiosks, and who knows what else.
To be honest, I find her search fascinating and hopeful; albeit slightly bizarre. Who doesn’t want to find that perfect person and fall madly in love, happily ever after? I’m looking for that perfect person too, but I can’t say for sure if she’s a Sarah, Bridget, Kelly, or a Molly.
I can’t help but be reminded of horoscopes when I read her site. I’ve long held a debate on whether horoscopes and fortunes are legit, or if a person can make the prescribed events happen just by expecting that it will. A placebo effect of sorts. Say for example, your fortune cookie says you’ll meet the perfect person tomorrow. You’re feeling confident, you strike up an impromptu conversation with someone random and hit it off. Was there a higher power there? Perhaps just your new found confidence pushing you to make that connection happen, as you were expecting it would. You were looking for it to happen, and therefore facilitated it’s occurrence. Or how about this… your horoscope mentions something about taking a financial risk and reaping the benefits; you go buy a lottery ticket and win $20. Did that have anything to with astrology, or simply the fact that you convinced yourself you were in for a gain, bought a ticket and won by sheer coincidence. Maybe that’s not the best example, but it’s the best I’ve got right now.
My point is that I can’t help but wonder how of many of these events are actually synchronistic, and how much of it Molly finds significant simply because she is looking/hoping for it to be there. Just a thought.
In any case, y’all can check out her blog, or for whole 9-yards: mysearchforben.com.
I wish you the best Molly!
I appreciated what you wrote and found it both well written and thought-provoking. Truth be told, on my site I leave out most of the science side of this (Uncertainty Principle, et al., because my friends all agreed that it made me sound too strange). I don’t honestly know what I believe. Every single “clue” led me to Red Herring #2, and that didn’t work out at all, so I wonder if I should just make the documentary and leave the rest to chance. Gotta know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em, you know? I was hoping to have interesting, somewhat conclusive results in my notebooks that didn’t look like something out of “The Celestine Prophecy” or like I was sitting around, lighting incense and chanting about energy fields and working on my chakras…whatever, I don’t really know anything about that stuff (and ironically don’t read my horoscope – except in The Onion). Thank you for wishing me the best, and for having some intelligent thoughts on the subject. If nothing else, it could be an interesting debate on intuition and synchronicity vs. Newtonian science and coincidence…The one thing I can say for sure is that the Universe has a really, really, really good sense of humor!
-Molly Gilford
Molly, I don’t have too many readers yet, as this site just went live a few days ago, but I did my best to support your cause (short of buying ben’s pixels, ha). I don’t read my horoscope either, unless I happen to glance by it in the paper or something. The last one I saw for me had, the guy had written a personal ad for us gemini’s (seems particularly fitting for this topic, no?
Here’s what he wrote: Slapstick thinker with refined sensibilities seeks a saint-like sinner with insanely cool style for a long-distance joyride towards the outskirts of Nirvana. Established meditation practice and a good bedside manner are desirable. Would it be too much to ask that you might also have a high level of emotional intelligence without boring me to death with your maturity? It is possible that you’ll be an entertaining talker who also knows how to listen with your wild heart turned up all the way? Let’s keep reinventing ourselves forever.