INSIGHTS · Jun 12, 2026 · 3 min read

The Mathematics of Meeting Someone Who Just Gets You

This one is not a property post. It started as a carousel I drew for Instagram, and it travelled further than anything I have ever published — close to half a million views in a week, almost all from strangers. I think I know why. So I am writing the longer version here, for keeps.

We treat it like nothing. Bumping into the friend who just gets you. The one who texts back at 2am, who remembers the small things, who feels like home.

But run the math.

First, you both had to exist at the same time

Out of every century that ever was — and every century still to come — your two lifetimes had to overlap. Not by a decade. By enough years, in the right years, that you could actually know each other. Most of the people you would have loved in history, you simply missed. They were born too early. Or you were.

Then, out of eight billion people, you landed in the same place

Same country. Same city. Same street. Same room. On the same ordinary day. Nobody planned it. Out of eight billion possible lives running in parallel, two of them drifted across continents, schools, jobs and bus routes — and ended up standing in the same few square metres of the planet.

And you showed up in the same minute

This is the part that quietly breaks me. A whole life holds about 700,000 hours. Your paths crossed in one of them. Arrive an hour earlier, leave ten minutes later, take the other staircase — and the moment dissolves. You would never even know what you missed, because missing it leaves no trace.

One different choice, and it never happens

One other seat. One cancelled plan. One “next time” that never came. The friendship that holds your life together right now survived a thousand coin flips it never knew it was part of — and won every single one.

So the people who feel like home were never luck you can repeat

That is the real conclusion of the math. Not that the odds were small — but that they are unrepeatable. You cannot re-run the experiment. There is no second sample. The person who gets you is, statistically speaking, a one-time event in the history of the universe.

So hold them a little closer. Tell them they matter. Reply to the message you have been sitting on since last week — you know the one.

The odds were never in your favour. And somehow — there they are.

I spend my working life helping people find a different kind of home, the one with walls and a 25-year loan. But the longer I do this job, the more I believe the two are the same project: a home is just the place where the improbable people in your life keep showing up. The flat is the venue. They are the point.