Chapter III: “Coincidence”

Coincidence:  a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.

“Come on, man.  There has to be a reasonable explanation.”  It’s almost as if his mind won’t let his spirit hope.  “He probably happened upon some dinosaur YouTube video while you were cooking dinner.  He probably replayed it six or twenty-seven times and it stuck itself into your subconsciousness and sparked the dream.” 

Over the past two months he always felt guilty about enjoying his short dreams with his son.  He should accept his son exactly the way he is.  Why did he so selfishly find pleasure from a stupid 10 second dream where his son could speak?  And why did he feel such gut-wrenching depression when he woke up and realized it wasn’t real?  He files these questions away to ask the therapist he promised his wife he would see some day. 

“But, what if?”

It is impossible to concentrate at work.  He drifts between thoughts of spirituality, higher consciousness, embarrassment and guilt.  He opens Facebook in his browser and starts to scroll through the endless memes of positivity, inspiration and R-rated humor that his feed has become.  You really can tell a lot about  a person from their Facebook News Feed.  Every time they click “Like” they paint a stroke on a self portrait. 

His mind turns to God.

He always admired those who were honestly “spiritual”.  He admired them like one admires professional athletes:  Like they were born with something he just didn’t have.  He knew that was a cop out.  In truth, he was just too lazy to explore his own faith.  So he labeled himself “agnostic” and rationalized to his wife (and himself) that “if there was a God, he would understand his hesitation to go ‘all-in’.”…