Essay

Raindrops

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Many years ago, on a November morning, I was driving up the M1 and stopped at the motorway cafe close by the M6 junction. The place felt as grey as the sky. I let the window down a few inches for some fresh air and sat wondering whether or not to risk the weather and answer the call of nature.

 

Rain started to fall, not torrentially nor as drizzle, just those large occasional drops that front a really good storm. One, then another, then another dropped onto my trouser leg. At the oblique angle viewed from the sky the gap that was being navigated was not even an inch in width. Yet they had found their mark from a distance of perhaps several miles.

 

I pondered over this for some time. The accuracy that these raindrops exhibited seemed beyond belief. If they had exhibited any intention what were the chances of this occurring at random? As infinitesimal as the proverbial monkeys typing out a Shakespeare play. So why is no one the least bit surprised when I relate the incident? Because we know there is no intention, that there are so many millions of drops a few are bound to get through and may enjoy an even stranger destination than my leg.

 

In fact, randomness is what we are talking about. If we considered for a moment the possibility that technological genius allowed us to identify individual raindrops we could report on how drop no. 123xyz started life within a cloud 3 miles above us, swirled around for some while and finally managed to fall through a gap of 1 ft by 1 inch without even touching the sides. There might be a brief ‘gosh’ moment but we would know that, actually, we have no means of knowing which drops will hit where and we’d simply turn our minds to the general inconvenience of rainstorms and how to avoid them.

 

I began to see a parallel in this storm with the way lives are washed with fortune and circumstance. We are born as the clouds build, grow into adulthood as the storm buffets us into paths we know not, live our mature years as it rages with a ferocity interspersed with moments of calm and finally as it dies away so we return to oblivion and a form of eternity we do not understand but might have faith in.

 

Suppose we take these raindrops as each possessing a unique characteristic. In the beginning, as the drops find their distinct mark, we are hit by particular characteristics and circumstance that shape our lives. Here is the drop containing strength, another labelled sensitivity and another called determination. Others are named poverty, sickliness, intelligence, sense of humour and stature. Over the years we are built by random drops that create the uniqueness that is each one of us.

 

 

Sometimes the combination results in great artists, scientists or athletes. Occasionally a great leader emerges just at the time they are required. At other times, presumably, a great leader is produced when they are not required. They live their lives in oblivion and are never heard of. How we marvel at Da Vinci, Mozart and Einstein. They had talents and abilities that the rest of us can only dream about. But we should never marvel at the fact that such combinations of talent and circumstance exist in one person. Those countless raindrops will combine on rare occasions to produce rare people. For as certainly as they might travel through the skies to hit one blade of grass in sequence, is the inevitability of great genius.

 

We can take this idea further. Rare combinations of character and circumstance are no more or less likely than rare combinations of sequences of events over time. But here we find a curiosity. Though people are not surprised in the least by raindrops hitting odd places when they occur at about the same time during a storm, if these drops are perceived as some of the millions of events that cascade through our lives, rare combinations and sequences suddenly become startling and mystifying. Reaction varies from a deep religious experience to a conversation piece at a dinner party.

 

The difference is time. Raindrops combining to form an extraordinary person might be acceptable. Raindrops viewed as single events do not get combined in the observer’s mind and can look incredible. While people can accept that rare people are merely the coincidence of combinations of ability with circumstance they find it more difficult to accept rare sequences of events in the same light particularly when it affects them personally and the sequence has apparent meaning.

 

An event that occurred to me some years ago illustrates the point. I was staying with an aunt temporarily while studying when I decided one evening that a break from books would be more than welcome. I had not seen my friend John for some months and decided to drive the ten miles or so to his home without phoning to check he would be available. I just felt like giving him a surprise.

 

He was certainly available because he answered the door but to my astonishment he was not in the least surprised. Quite the contrary, I was the one surprised. In the living room was a mutual friend who lived in Hong Kong and who had flown over for a brief visit. Indeed, their only surprise was that I was surprised. John had phoned my mother earlier that evening not realising I was at my aunt’s and had asked that I come over to meet our mutual friend. The message did not reach me.

Was this mind reading or telepathy? Or was it coincidence. If the latter it was certainly extraordinary but those raindrops, given enough of them, will eventually find themselves in any feasible sequence of events and situations. And the millions of times in each of our daily lives when strange coincidences do not occur merely proves the point.

 

Superstition, black magic and religious faiths have relied upon such experiences for thousands of years tending even to invent sequences when none existed. During the 16th and 17th centuries witches were burned on precisely this form of evidence. Why did two people die so close together when both had had disagreements with the old lady down the lane? Why is most of the village suffering from St Vitas' Dance but she isn't? Why did a church elder fall ill after walking by her cat? All these events are just raindrops in life's storms but meaningful sequence can be invented from coincidence with such force that people lose their lives in consequence.

 

In the cathedral at Cuzco, one of the major cities of Peru, there is a venerated crucifix which 'saved' many hundreds of lives from an earthquake in the mid seventeenth century. While the ground rumbled about them the people walked around the main square with the crucifix praying for an end to the impending disaster. The earthquake stopped. Hardly a miracle, there has never been an earthquake that didn't stop. But the people wanted sequence born of cause and effect. Both the citizens of Cusco and the church in medieval Europe wanted meaning from the panoply of events that befell them. The human mind yearned for it then and yearns for it now. It will search in desperation until it is found or invented. What people do not want is coincidence.

 

The problem with the raindrop analogy is that it can seem too true to be good. It can be taken to extremes without straining its credulity. One can view not just the raindrops in a storm as a random sequence but as part of a sequence of storms containing all raindrops that have ever existed. Indeed, this idea has to be grasped to place the nature of coincidence into context.

 

People might be astounded, for example, by a sequence in cards that fall to the table, say all four aces then all four kings. But can this sequence not be perceived as part of the random sequence of all cards that have ever been laid? From this view it is inevitable that somewhere, someday four aces then four kings will be laid in precisely this order. Aunt Agatha might well be astounded that it happened while she was playing but the sequence is not defined as being all those cards ever laid in the presence of Aunt Agatha, just all those cards ever laid. A totally false picture would result if sequences were split into time slots after the event.

 

When we experience a series of events that seems unimaginably unlikely, we have to remember that the series doesn't start and end with us. It started when those events became possible and will end when they become impossible. The time span in which we experienced them might be infinitesimal compared to that. Besides raindrops, a storm may create a single bolt of lightning. How extraordinary is it that someone is killed by it? The bereaved family will be shocked into disbelief. But lightning will occur and people will decide to walk in exposed areas, even if their car had broken down and they had little choice. These are all raindrops of fate and, over time, will almost inevitably join on occasion to hit a single spot together.

 

The raindrop analogy assumes that events, circumstances and even characteristics are indistinguishable. It is not possible to know what event or series of events we will meet over the coming months and years or in what circumstances those events will occur. They are merely alternate combinations of raindrops hitting unspecified spots in undefined sequences. The series of events that you will meet one particular day in the future are just raindrops. The circumstances and environment in which you will meet them are just raindrops. And your reaction to them governed by your temporary mood and underlying character and personality are yet more raindrops.

 

This idea of randomness is anathema to those people with religious faith who insist that the events in their lives are governed by a guiding hand and that a real decision can be made about choices if help is requested. Others, with similar faith, are able to accept randomness without problem because they assume they will get the rough with the smooth like everyone else and simply call on God when the road gets hard. I have no intention, nor could I, of persuading them otherwise. It is possible, after all, that they are right and I am wrong. But the 'raindrop theory', this idea of randomness, helps to understand how life ticks and the way it treats everyone at different times with marvellous fortune or vicious bad luck.

 

There are many examples of which we are all aware in which a rare combination of events and circumstance gives someone almost everything they wish except for one raindrop that destroys it all. The perfect sequence except for one essential element. We might recall the athlete who is provided with strength and suppleness, stamina and opportunity, luck and the means of finance. Then, at the height of their fortune, is provided with cancer or an accident that removes a leg. We remember the musician whose delicacy of touch is destroyed by illness or the ordinary person in the street who has great visions of their retirement only to die within a month of achieving it.

 

These ideas do not necessarily contradict the principles of external guidance or internal freewill. External decisions about where the drops of fortune may fall, and internal decisions as to one's reaction, may well be taken. But that tells one nothing about which event will befall whom. The 'freewill' reaction to it will, in any event, create unknown chains of further events that will interact with external decisions about other events.

 

A belief in a God that oversees the universe, guiding those who ask for help and support, provides no certainty of the help He will give. We still see that those with this faith experience contentment and devastation in as equal a measure as anyone else. It does not remove the apparent randomness of life's little tricks in any way whatsoever. It just alters the source. And if, additionally, we accept the principle of freewill then the source of events becomes inextricably entwined within an unfathomable web and the perception of randomness is complete.

 

I was discussing with a lady friend from the North of England the good fortune, and otherwise, she had experienced now that she was married for the third time. She was deeply religious and her faith had not been dented by the fact of two husbands leaving her for other women. She was sure that meeting her present husband was not luck but 'was meant to be'. It was part of God's plan for her. When I asked her why she imagined that she should be chosen for a happy relationship when others, equally attached to their faith, one of whom I knew personally, spent decades pining for lost loves, she had no answer. Whether she was right or wrong, whether God had decided to provide her with that man at that time or not, it looked suspiciously like the luck of the draw.

 

Another aspect of the idea of randomness with which some will disagree is in the field of genetics. We are, after all, formed from our father and mother and this means that some random raindrops are less random than others. While this may be true it gets us almost nowhere. Nobody dares to predict the characteristics of a baby from the parents. We all know examples of brothers and sisters who are totally different from each other and many a genius has been born of particularly ordinary parents. Which sperm is going to arrive at which egg? Even if we take a leap of imagination in genetic engineering to the point where babies are born to parental specification we still would have no idea how they would react to all the circumstantial minutiae of their lives as it unfolds nor how their reactions will influence the lives of those around them from the moment of their birth.

 

Once again we are drawn to the conclusion that, though there may be some element of control over human characteristics, the events and circumstances that surround our lives are so complex that we are back, to all intents and purposes, to the randomness of raindrops in a storm.

 

Randomness, it seems to me, has been for ever and will remain for ever. We cannot know which raindrops will hit which spot. We can only make clever guesses at the region in which a rainstorm will form and even then only over a period of a few hours. The series of drops on any one place that have fallen since time began and will fall until time ceases is unknowable. Every event is part of a sequence that has an indeterminate end and beginning. The longer that sequence the more an improbable event becomes ever more likely. Most important of all, as sequences approach an infinite length so every event that is not impossible becomes almost inevitable.