The Yin-Yang in Aisle 9

Astronomical odds, or an ordinary moment?

I’ve always been an introverted over-thinker, someone who questions everything and finds a strange solace in the depths of my own mind. Sometimes these profound thoughts have caused me pain throughout my life—a spiritual longing without foundation that has led me on a quiet spiritual quest without a fixed home. I’ve explored various philosophies and religions, perhaps searching for where my restless mind belongs. I found myself particularly drawn to Buddhism and Taoism, captivated by their perspectives on the nature of existence.

Back in February, I began reading the Tao Te Ching. Just a few days later, my wife felt like going to a discount retail store nearby. I really didn’t want to go and tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. Reluctantly, I gave in, and we drove there.

As we walked through the store looking at miscellaneous items, I found myself rummaging through a large cardboard box filled with plush toys. Nothing special, just the usual bears, dogs, and cats. My wife was browsing in another aisle, and I was just killing time. That’s when I came across a small plush yin-yang symbol, slightly larger than my hand.

“How fitting,” I thought. “I’m reading the Tao Te Ching, and here’s a yin-yang.” But what happened next defies any rational explanation. For no particular reason, I opened the tag attached to it and saw my name: Josh.

I just... couldn’t believe it.

The sheer improbability of it all still gives me pause. What are the odds?

• My wife had a sudden, inexplicable urge to go to a store I didn’t want to visit.

• We chose that specific store out of countless options.

• I, a reluctant participant, chose to look through that specific cardboard box.

• And in that box, among hundreds of generic stuffed animals, was a yin-yang—the very symbol of the philosophy I was currently reading about—with my name on the tag.

I don’t believe anything supernatural happened, but the odds feel truly astronomical. It wasn’t divine intervention, but rather a moment that makes you wonder about the nature of the universe itself. Perhaps there’s an unseen current, a kind of cosmic flow that arranges these perfect, improbable moments.

The Tao teaches that life flows in ways beyond our understanding, that there’s an underlying order we rarely perceive. Maybe my resistance to the trip, followed by this unexpected discovery, was itself an expression of the Taoist principle of wu wei—the idea that when we stop forcing and allow things to unfold naturally, life reveals its hidden harmonies.

It’s a reminder that sometimes the universe is “just like this”—full of inexplicable coincidences that feel as if they were meant to be, not through supernatural design, but through the natural synchronicities that emerge when we’re open to the flow of existence itself.

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Picture I took of “Josh” the yin-yang:

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