Professor unwittingly buys back the same exact book she lost 5 years ago

The Circle of Life does not only apply to living things, folks.

Five years ago, Eugenia Zuroski, an associate professor of English at McMaster University in Ontario, lost her copy of Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping and Business in the Eighteenth Century by Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace after lending it to one of her students. She'd purchased the copy in 2000, and it had traveled with her during her many moves.

After being without the book for a while, she finally ordered cheap copy on Amazon. When she opened the book and found her name and the date written in the top right-hand corner of the title page, she was shocked to find out that it was the exact same copy she had mysteriously misplaced years earlier.

Eugenia tweeted out this picture on Monday:

Eugenia recounted her disbelief to Mashable.

"I was stunned!" she said. "I put it down for a second and picked it back up to make sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing."

When asked if she thought this was some sort of cosmic sign from the universe, she replied, "I definitely thought it was uncanny, especially since the book is actually about shopping practices and how consumer markets encourage us to feel closely attached to the things we buy!"

Coincidence, serendipitous -- call it what you will. But it is definitely nothing short of incredible.

[H/T: Select All]