Serendipity in Rice and Beans
Last week, it seemed like everyone I knew was eating rice and beans. Not in a planned, let's-all-be-on-the-same-meal-prep-wavelength kind of way—just pure, unspoken synchronicity.
It started when I visited my friend’s new apartment. We were half-watching Netflix, half-playing Roblox, fully enjoying the kind of effortless companionship that requires no performance. At some point, I mentioned offhandedly that I had made a big batch of rice and beans for the week. Nothing major, just a practical meal to keep me fed and functioning.
She sat up suddenly, eyes wide. “No way,” she said. “I did the same thing.”
Her boyfriend had also made a big batch of rice and beans without talking to her about it beforehand. Three people, one meal, zero coordination. Just an odd alignment of events.
Earlier that day, she had been talking about how life had been throwing her a string of little serendipities—random moments that seemed too perfectly timed to be coincidence. I told her I wished I was as tuned into my life as she was into hers, that I felt like I was missing those moments of magic. And then, just a few hours later, we found ourselves in the middle of one, staring at each other in disbelief over a shared bowl of beans.
Is it naive to believe that when things happen in tandem, they’re meant to? That life is secretly a beautifully orchestrated symphony, and we just miss most of the notes because we aren’t really listening? Or is it all just randomness, a meaningless shuffle of events that our minds try to stitch together into a pattern because we love a good story?
We don’t pay enough attention. We move through life with our heads down—literally, metaphorically. When we walk down the street, our eyes are on the pavement or our phones, rarely on the sky, the trees, the way the light hits the buildings. We don’t look at people’s faces, don’t notice the tiny details—our friend’s favorite shirt that they wear all the time, the way a sentence we said might have shifted their mood.
And we certainly don’t notice that all of our friends are eating rice and beans.
Maybe that’s the secret to feeling like life is full of meaning—not some grand, universal force guiding our every move, but simply the act of paying attention. Of looking up. Of noticing what is already there. Because when we do, we start seeing connections, patterns, little winks from the universe that remind us we are not moving through this world alone.
I want to start noticing more. Not just the obvious things, but the small ones, the absurd ones, the ones that seem too trivial to matter. I want to keep an eye out for synchronicities, no matter how silly. To pay attention to the way life moves around me, the way people cross my path, the way seemingly unconnected moments thread together when I take a step back.
Maybe tonight someone I know will make a big pot of rice and beans.
