Serendipity or Premonition

I was driving my four-wheeler on the trunk road 17 on the way home, the vehicle's clock showed 2000 and no more than 80 Kph. The road has two channels, one comes and one goes, to the left I am accompanied by the mountain with its thick vegetation and to my right the depth of the cliff. The night is so dark that in its immensity a firefly can call your attention, and the silence stuns you in such a way that only the soft, almost imperceptible sound of the electric motor accompanies me.

The car's headlights alert me to the curve ahead in a hundred metres. In the distance, a little light flickers on and off; it's not a firefly, its behaviour is very periodic, constant. Two metres from entering the bend, I slow down. A few metres into the cliff, I now see two flashing lights, I decide to get out of the bend, I pull over to the left, leaving all the car lights on in order to attract the attention of any absent-minded driver driving along the main road.

From the boot, I grabbed the torch, backtracked to the start of the bend. As I illuminated the cliff, about ten metres down, the flashes came from a small carburettor still exuding steam. The approximate temperature was 29 °F (-1.67 degree Celsius). I unpacked my mobile phone to call emergency, but typical, between peaks and chasms the signal was lost, I was isolated, impossible to communicate. Deciding between going down to the car or driving to the nearest aid station, maybe seventy kilometres either way, I decided to go down.

As I descended, my brain made judgements that led the driver to lose control of his car. Possibly he's open, maybe he tried to take the corner at high speed, maybe he fell asleep… Our brain is always looking for justification.

At first glance, there was no one inside the vehicle. The windscreen was completely broken and there were signs that a body had been ejected through it. The tinge of red filled the scene and the depth that my torch could not illuminate, I assumed the worst. Ready to turn back, in the stunned silence, a cry from inside the bruised vehicle brought me to my senses. In the back seat, on a perfectly secured infant seat, a beautiful baby girl with clear laughter; it can't be!

You can imagine what happened next. I picked up the delicate creature and carried her to the nearest aid station. A couple of hours later, traffic authorities, firemen, and even the media were present at the elbow before the homicidal curve. The report was conclusive, two mangled bodies were rescued from one hundred and fifty metres below the crashed vehicle. According to traits and DNA testing, they were the parents of the minor.

The deep darkness conspired to make me the one who saw that flash, and the silence conspired to make me hear the little girl's whisper. I have been asking myself the same question for years. Was it a random moment in time, chance, or serendipity. I will never know. Twenty years have passed since then, and a recurring dream, an encounter with a young girl who, after an hour of exchanging experiences, ends up being that little girl from the fatal accident.

Generally, we spend about 2 hours a daydreaming. However, the very condition of the dream means that our attention is not focused on it. OK, yes, you may have spent days thinking about that strange scene you thought you had experienced in your sleep, sometimes they even enter your conscious thoughts when you wake up, to the point of functioning as affirmation.

According to studies conducted by The Sleep Foundation, between 17.8% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive or premonitory dream in their lives. That is, dreams that apparently predict the future. Not only that, but there are, in fact, those who go even further, claiming to have predicted some personal or collective event while awake.

Most of us have experienced premonitions to one degree or another. For example, when the phone rings, and you are sure who is calling you, even if it is an unexpected call. Sometimes the premonition is not so specific, but a kind of stronger feeling that seems to be anchored somewhere in our organism, something like having a bad feeling. **The problem with the vast majority of so-called premonitions is that they are not documented. To date, however, there is little scientific evidence to suggest that the future can be predicted, even through dreams. Since the accident, I have never had any contact with the relatives who assumed guardianship of the child, let alone with her.

This could be what they call tolerance of ambiguity, when ambiguous dreams are interpreted as positive or desirable. Researchers call this “ambiguity tolerance“. People with a high tolerance for ambiguity are more likely to experience premonition dreams. There is also the option of selective recall, i.e. keeping a dream based on our mind's interest in it. I will keep dreaming, waiting for the experience to come true.