Countless strange incidents occurred in my life. The following happened in December 2010. My wife and I were sitting at the kitchen table. She was discussing her late mother and father. Her mother had outlived her father for more than three decades. She then recalled that her mother had once asked her father to contact her as a spirit if he was to die first. She then remembered her mother later saying that he had never made himself noticed, ‘not even by stopping a clock.’

Just after my wife had finished speaking, a gust of wind blew a flower pot over the balcony. It made a loud noise. Even though it was windy, the blow suddenly came out of nowhere. It was a bit eerie. The next day she noticed that a clock and an alarm clock were both back one hour. One was connected to the power grid while the other ran on a battery. So did her late father make himself noticed from the beyond?

Perhaps you too have experienced something you can’t explain, an incredible coincidence or something else, for instance, a near-death experience. Or maybe you know someone who did. You can’t reason it away, so you believe there is something more. And that can be comforting. Perhaps there is a God, and maybe your life has a purpose.

Oh ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire,
won’t you dance for me cos I just don’t care,
what’s going on today, I think there’s something more, something more.
And I’m gone with the wind like they were before.
But I’m believing myself I think there’s something more.
There must be something more, I think there’s something more, something more.

– Amy MacDonald, Footballer’s Wife

But why do people believe in an afterlife or in God? Is it because they fear death or want their life to have meaning? Would it be so bad if our existence is just the result of mere chance and evolution and that we exist for no particular reason? Is that so much worse than playing a small part in the grand scheme of a Supreme Puppet Master? And eternal life? I would bore myself to death. For a long time, I believed that I would die one day and that it would all be over by then. And that was quite comforting to me.

Let’s end this on a lighter note. In 2014 we visited the monkey zoo Apenheul in Apeldoorn. We had been walking around watching monkeys for three hours or so. Then a long-tailed monkey came down from a tree to sit near me. I could have touched its tail if I wanted to. And so I said to my wife jokingly, ‘Well, if I pull the tail, a bell will go off, saying ding-dong.’ Then, within a second, a loud ding-dong came from the speakers all over the zoo. An announcement followed. There had not been an announcement all day, nor did one follow later on. The monkey zoo is in Apeldoorn. That is also a bit peculiar as this name refers to the word ape. Indeed, there may be more about this universe than science can explain.

Latest revision: 2 May 2023

Featured image: from Apenheul website. [copyright info]