Most people naively believe that, being free thinkers, they are in total control of their lives.

Most of us, however, recognise an irresistible pull of destiny. This pull suggests our mortality is purpose-led.   

Anthony Hopkins couldn’t find a book anywhere in London. Then he sat down on a subway bench.

It was 1973. And the aspiring actor had just landed a role in a film called ‘The Girl from Petrovka.’  The novel was based a novel by American journalist George Feifer.

Because Hopkins wanted to read the source material. He spent an entire day searching bookshops along London’s famous Charing Cross Road.

Nothing. The book wasn’t available anywhere in the UK.

Frustrated and defeated, Hopkins walked into the Leicester Square Underground station to catch a train home. That’s when he noticed something on a bench. Someone had left a book behind. He picked it up and turned it over.

The Girl from Petrovka

The exact book he’d been searching for all day was left on a subway bench. This happened in a city of eight million people.

Hopkins could not believe his strange good fortune. He took the book home.

After scanning its pages, he noticed that the book’s margins were filled with handwritten notes in red ink. Observations. Someone had marked up this copy extensively.

He didn’t think much of it

He found the handwritten notes useful in discovering the storyline. They helped him to understand his character. The notes prepared for his role. Otherwise, he filed the coincidence away as one of life’s unexplainable moments.

Months later, Hopkins traveled to Vienna, where the film was being shot. One day on set, he was introduced to a visitor.

George Feifer. The author of the book.

The two talked about the film, the characters, and the story. Then Feifer mentioned something that made Hopkins stop cold.

‘I don’t have a copy of my own book anymore,’ Feifer said. ‘I lent my personal copy to a friend a couple of years ago. It had all my notes in the margins. He lost it somewhere in London. I’ve never seen it since.’

Hopkins felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

‘I found a copy,’ he said slowly. ‘On a bench in the Underground. It has handwritten notes throughout.’

Feifer looked at him sceptically.

Hopkins retrieved the book from his things and handed it to the author.

Feifer went pale.

It was his copy. His handwriting. His comments in the novel’s margins. The personal copy he’d lent to a friend any years earlier. The fictional story needed a wider audience.

Somehow, it had ended up abandoned on a subway bench. At that exact moment, Anthony Hopkins, the actor who needed it most, happened to sit down beside it.

In a city of many millions. Across thousands of streets. Among hundreds of tube stations.

The right book. The right bench. The right moment.

George Feifer got his lost book back. Anthony Hopkins got a story he would tell for the rest of his life.

Carl Jung called it synchronicity. This is the idea that meaningful coincidences aren’t random. Instead, they reflect some deeper pattern in the fabric of reality.

Hopkins has always been fascinated by the concept. He’s spoken in interviews about learning to simply be amazed by life.

‘I don’t know if there’s a master plan,’ he once said. ‘But sometimes things happen that are just too perfect to explain.’

Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was just the universe having a bit of fun.

Or maybe, just maybe, some books are meant to find their readers. And some stories are meant to be told.

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THE SOUL MATES by Award Winning International Writer Michael Walsh will inspire you. It encourages you to closely analyse your own life and relationships. It urges you to ask yourself – are my relationships supernaturally created by the gravitational pull of destiny? https://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-walsh/the-soul-mates/paperback/product-2mj59mz.html?q=&page=1&pageSize=4