Do you believe the universe tries to tell us things

[Astarthatshinesforyou]

And it tries to push us in another direction or gives hints of it?
Currently live abroad, but for a while it feels everything has been against us-not keen on the schools, had money struggles, now lots of ill health and people passing in the family.
I often wonder if it’s just telling us to give up, go back home.
Have you ever felt like this? Do you fight against it or leave things to fate?

Objectively my kids aren't "amazing" actually. I don't really like one of them quite a lot of the time, one isn't doing great in school, they don't win prizes and they're quite selfish. But they are my kids so unless they do something truly awful then I'll continue to love them as a parent should. What I'm saying is that whichever genetic combination my children had ended up with, or any of us do is just chance. If my mum and married someone other than my dad "I" would be someone else, would have had a different childhood, leading most likely to a different career, met different people etc. there's no "right" path or doing what you're meant to be doing. You just have to be pro-active. The pp who said "shit happens" and you cope, make choices etc had it on P1.

It's not mystical, you just don't like where you're living.

Heh. We as a species have been trying to figure out, quantify and utilise this concept since consciousness evolved. Religion, philosophy, magical thinking....

Personally I think everything is connected as Dirk Gently would say. We are balls in a continual game of roulette and whether it's random or whether there is meaning is a conundrum that cannot be resolved because it's too complex to grasp. Detached awareness is a tricky thing to master in that as soon as one attaches meaning or emotion to things, it alters everything and can lead us down rocky paths indeed.

Ultimately if things aren't working one can actively change things or wait and see what happens. In either case if you don't like the outcome, rinse and repeat trying different things.

I think our big mistake is thinking of "the Universe" as a separate sentient entity with power if its own, when we're all part of existence ergo the Universe.... without consciousness nothing would exist at all and nothing would have meaning......

PS. The Universe is also Fight Club lol 😉

All I know is that I've tried to tell the universe a lot of things and, perhaps, instruct and influence it in some way. But it appears to have more inertia than I do, so my policy nowadays is rolling with the punches.

No. The universe isn't conscious. It's just a vast heap of nothingness with a sprinkling of stuff. And, even if you imagine all of those hugely dispersed scraps of stuff could think, how arrogant do you have to be to believe they're thinking about you - and sending you signs??!

Get over yourself.

You get odd coincidences in life that are sometimes difficult to explain. Earlier this year I picked up some items off Freegle a mile away from my home on a street I’d never been to in my life. Just weeks later I was offered the tenancy next door to the house I visited.

That's really not difficult to explain. It's just chance. The person you picked up from has to live somewhere. Why not next door to your future home? Imagine you move there, and end up marrying the neighbour, or move there and and the roof leaks and the person who comes to fix it is your future spouse..you'd never have met them if the roof hadn't leaked! If you'd moved somewhere else with a good roof but crap electrics, maybe you'd marry the electrician. It's random.

I know people who are married to the person their fresher year uni room was next to. They could have been allocated differently, got a different A level result and gone elsewhere...there are an infinite number of possibilities and whatever it whoever we end up with is just the result of what we do about the people and things that cross our path. Had any of those things listed above been different, you'd marry someone different and probably think they were equally wonderful.

Coincidences are just that.

I’m not so sure. People who pick the right six numbers in lotto before the draw. (I’ve got them all right a few times but only after the draw.)

There’s got to be cosmic intervention there, surely. Otherwise how would they know to get the numbers right?

Ok but of all the houses anywhere I could have gone to collect something anywhere in any town, it just happened to be right next door to the place I was going to be offered a few weeks later?

Our universe friends know, they watch, they listen.

They try to help, to guide so I 1000% believe they try to tell us things!

Yes, coincidence. Just random chance. I was 300 miles from home yesterday and bumped into someone who lives on the next street. So? If you think these things are more than that, it implies there's some meaning ..what is the meaning behind you visiting that street? Had you not done so, would you have turned down the tenancy? Or just popped a mile up the road to suss it out? Why would God / the universe actually care about your house move?

They don't. It is chance. If it's more than that you have to then ask why them? Why not someone more deserving, in need?

That's the problem at the heart of all of this...for everyone who says they were blessed when they had a miraculous near miss, or fortunate encounter does that mean those involved in accidents or sad about living alone because they haven't met "the one" are being punished? Have bad karma or are not pleasing God? After 9/11 there were hundreds of stories about people who should have been on one of the planes, or should have been at work but were late, ill, had a dentist appointment or something and thank God or angels for saving them. What the hell does that mean for those who were on the planes or at their desks?

Yes. I do think quite often that things happen for a reason. Not always, but often. Certainly The Universe seems to be placing Trump for a second term, with all that will follow on from that...

OP - pray for guidance!

I don't think it's about whether "the Universe" cares or not, but even physicists acknowledge that the tiniest components can behave in ways we don't understand. The most brilliant scientific minds have spent inordinate amounts of time and money trying to figure out the how and why of our existence. Without that we'd still be living in the stone age. For some reason we are wired to attach values of "good" or "evil" to things and to seek meaning. That in itself is a fascinating thing to explore.

I don't think that this run of bad things happening in your life is a sign to move back home. But I do strongly believe in intuition and listening to your gut. I've made many a decision based on my 'gut' and I've never been wrong

Thank you. I was just being purposely silly to make a point.

I find it depressing that so many adults can’t understand chance and look for meaning and a ‘guiding hand’ in what is just the law of probability playing out in our lives.

Explaining the choice of winning numbers by believing that the late, much-loved Granny Deidre’s house number came up because she’s watching over us…

I've been doing my family tree now and have had two massive coincidences. Also I'm in Ancestry FB groups and such coincidences are two a penny. A house on a hill that someone passes every day and admires- turns out his Gran grew up in it. Choosing to go to Uni in some far-off city only to find that your family was originally from that city. That kind of thing. One of my ' massives' was finding my dad's parents' address from the 1921 census (so before he was born,) in a city we didn't know they'd lived in. It was the exact same house that I found for my mum and she tried to buy nearly 100 years later, to be near me. Her ILs' old house.
I think it's some sort of genetic remembrance for places. So off-topic, but just to show that we don't understand everything in the universe!

Maybe your universe friends could tell you how percentages work...

The thing I'd be thinking about OP is whether your current run of sad and bad experiences is a blip, or something longer-lasting. Plus, are you looking at 'home' through rose-tinted specs, seeing the grass as greener etc.

For example, are the schools there, that your DC would get into, really better suited to their needs? Would they take advantage of the opportunities offered, or does part of the problem lie with them? Might you go through a whole lot of disruption moving back and find they're in no better a position?

More generally people need a better education in basic statistics and psychology. There's nothing difficult about understanding enough to see chance and coincidence for what it is.

On lottery numbers, if enough people play, selecting random numbers, chances are someone is going to choose correctly. They won't know in advance that they are correct (whatever they or anyone else happens to believe) but they will win.

Whereas what @FinalCeleryScheme seems to be saying is 'but how did they know in advance?'. They didn't, they guessed like everyone else. Then they were lucky. If they had special powers of foresight they'd win every week.

Religious people always seem to declare that God's plan for them involves the very path they intended to take anyway. I think it's the same with people who believe in the universe sending messages.

Our brains have near infinite capacity to recognise patterns where none exists.

you will find signs where you look for them.
your gut is the best compass

Speaking as someone with OCD, if my gut was my compass I'd never leave the sodding house.

With all these philosophies, I always think, does it work if you are a very poor person living on a rubbish dump or only for someone in the first world? If it's the latter then I can't give it any credence. The Secret for instance. Created by a middle class white American woman.
Thinking that there may be benign forces at work pushing you in a direction does pass that test.

So are our universe friends anti semitic then? Cos they didn’t guide 6 million Jews to escape the hooocaust.. Presumably they don’t like women either, as they’ve let an awful lot of shit happen to women over the millennia. Ditto gay people. They must’ve been pretty racist in the 1800s as that was a lot of African slaves they failed to help too.

In fact, they mainly seem to have liked men born into privileged positions as these are the people who seem to have got the best deal throughout history, so I guess the universe must have helped by guiding them to the best positions. And the universe must really like men who have leading roles in running empires as they’ve always done really well.

Funny how so many people seem to like the Universe when it’s so out of step with modern values!

100%. Listen to the signs