One of my favorite
coincidence games is also one of the very simplest. It’s to catch a one-liner
for the day from what the world gives you. This may be the vanity plate on the
car in front of you, or the logo on a truck, or a sign in a window or on a
billboard, or an overheard snatch of conversation, or the first thing that
comes on the car radio, or a Facebook ad, or the first line you read when you open a book at
random.

One morning my daily one-liner was presented to me in a very
mundane way, but it was a keeper – a banner for any day of the year. Over
breakfast (which I usually skip when at home) I opened our local paper to the
local page (something I do maybe three times a year). There, sprawling across
the page under the local news, backed by a green mountain landscape, was this
line from an ad for a brand of coffee:

I realized that today is the
day I write the story of my life.

 If I wanted to play with
this, I might try out this version: “Wake up and smell the story.” But the
original is perfect.

 Within minutes, two friends
contributed daily one-liners from equally non-exotic sources. Determined to
avoid surgery for knee problems, one of them had scheduled an appointment for a
new form of therapy that morning. When a pop-up daily horoscope appeared on her
computer she decided that instead of deleting it (her normal practice) she
would see if it gave her a message on her new treatment for her knee Her
horoscope read: 

Your creative solutions to difficult problems can be
legendary, and today, you bust out with a new one.

After discussing the
symbolism of “gateways” in life with me, the other friend went to her desk and
found that this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson popped up on her perpetual
calendar: 

The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension
waiting to be struck.

Now, that’s another banner for any day.

 I might say more, but my current one-liner from a mundane source – an ad that popped up on my Facebook page – reads:

Write the damned book proposal

Playing by my own rules, I have to take on that assignment.