Quote of the day: "Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds."- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

     James Redfield (one of my favorite authors, as I'm sure you are familiar with based on my profile) would tell you that there are no true coincidences, only the ones you create. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, that once you start identifying them, you put yourself in control. While I'm sure that you have some control over coincidences in your life, I'm not convinced that you are the only author of such phenomena.

     The universe is often mysterious in her communication with her tenants. Her language is one of infinite elegance and logic, though we have only a basic understanding... we are not yet fluent. She sends us clues and hints and glorious little puzzles to solve to help us on our journey, rarely making things obvious or readily apparent. A whisper, a wink, a nod, but never a nudge.

     Or, rarely a nudge.

     I have this pair of earbud headphones that go with my mp3 player. They're made by Sansa. They're black. They are marked with a small "L" and "R" for each to be placed in the correct ear. You would think that there is a 50% chance of selecting either the left or right earbud each time I pick them up. Little would you know, nor could you, that the universe is speaking to me. Through my earbuds. Not in the manner that you'd expect, however.

     I pick these head phones up frequently to use them, whether listening at home or taking them with me when I run. Each time I do, I need to see which earbud is which, so I can put it in the right (correct) ear. Each time I pick them up... WITHOUT FAIL... I pick up the "L." Seriously. I'm at like 100+ times in a row now. I first started noticing a few months ago, when it seemed like I was always putting the left one in first. Time after time, it was always the left. After like 20 times in a row, I started testing them. I'd pick them up at random times of the day whether I was gonna use them or not, and would chuckle when I would always pick up the "L."

     Cynically, I first thought that there must be some explanation for this. I knew it wasn't in how they were stored, because they are always in a jumbled mess on the end table, never arranged or wrapped or anything like that. I wondered if perhaps one was slightly heavier than the other, and though I certainly haven't weighed them (I'm not that weird), it doesn't seem to be the case. Other than the letter that marks which ear it's for, they are identical in every way. The foam cover. The color. The cord. There is only so much to an earbud, and it's all the same.

     So the answer becomes obvious. A slap in the face from the universe. She is clearly telling me something... anything...

     Though I'm still not sure exactly what she's saying, I do know that next time I'm lost, I'm turning left.