REFLECTION, RUMINATION & RHETORIC FROM THE ROAD: HEARTLAND FLIP

1. A Bout of Flip & See

June 1st (this Thursday) is “Flip a Coin Day.”

To celebrate this day you are supposed to make decisions by flipping a coin.

From Nationaltoday.com:

Flip a Coin Day, celebrated every year on June 1, is a day where the history and significance of coin tosses are highlighted. This is because coin flips have been used to make vital decisions for centuries and, from the looks of it, this habit will be carried forth by the coming generations. Instead of worrying yourself over difficult choices, leave the day to chance and make decisions based on a coin toss. All you have to do is trust the universe and flip a coin. So what do you choose: heads or tails?

Two years ago on Flip a Coin Day artist Thomas Van Stein and I set out to the American Heartland on a Flip Trip i.e. deciding destinations by the flip of a coin.

Our Master Coin for flipping was a U.S. Mint $25 piece of pure palladium, the second most precious metal in the world (rhodium is first).

Its significance to our mission:

Palladium is the Greek goddess of wisdom and provides protection and safety.

Angel Number 25 represents a change (along with personal freedom) and helps with mindfulness through introspection and accumulation of wisdom.

The coin is dated 2020, the year our Flip Trip was conceived and plotted (and not taken due to COVID) but, more important, it features Winged Mercury, the same “heads” on the coin Donald Duck flipped in Carl Barks’ February 1953 comic book Flip Decision—a Mercury dime.

Add this: Mercury is the Patron Deity of Travel.

Our manifesto for flip-tapping is called Manifance, a term I coined (pun fully intended) to mean manifesting destiny through chance as a synchronicity enhancer. (My other name for it: Chance Location Therapy.)

In Flip Decision the fictitious Professor Batty, founder of The Great Society of Flippists, sells Donald Duck (for one dollar) his book The Science of Flipism: Methods and Benefits of Flipism.

But Batty’s book only exists in two comic book quotes: “Where to go, we soon shall know” and “Life is a gamble, let flipism chart your ramble.”

This inspires Donald to take his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie on a road trip. (As usual with Donald, it turns into a fiasco.)

“Heads, the coin doth say,” announces Donald after a flip, “we will travel this-away!”

Our manifesto includes a glossary in which Barking mad (homage to Carl) means addicted to coin-flipping.

A Manifance quest is about destiny, given some chance, or allowing chance to guide your travel choices and become a lightning rod for messages from the universe.

All cluttered thoughts about your past and future disappear while body and soul are invigorated by a motional mani-festival in which only the present moment matters. It is about transcending the boundaries of one’s comfort zone and traveling through a magic portal into a world of wonderment and heightened awareness.  

From a book called Dance with Chance: “Seek beauty and opportunity in randomness—and take life-enhancing steps.”

Add the rolling of dice for smaller choices such as where to go for coffee in the morning and dinner in the evening and Manifance delivers what happens next, what portals may open, who you meet, what you learn, how you grow.

Because when you let chance decide where you’re going—the flip of a coin or the roll of a die—the journey itself is the destination; you are exactly where destiny has determined you should be.

Life is unpredictable but Manifance opens the door as wide as it can go to welcome a higher unpredictability.

Or as some sage wrote: “Deliberate randomness is the antithesis of reason, lacking rationality; it is a commitment to divine destiny.”