Synchronicity

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Synchronicity. The coincidental occurrence of events that seem related, but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality.

We all experience this, don’t we? Many times in our lives? Many of us might just brush it off as “coincidence” (events that occur at the same time by “accident,” but seem to have some connection)…but should we? I’m a firm believer that nothing is wasted in nature and life, nothing is “by accident.” Life is too precious and important to be chaotically accidental in any way.

Really, something as important as life is accidental?

Just happened to happen?

That might suit scientists, but not me. And I’m not going to get into all I feel is going on in the background, here, because this is the stuff of books…but I did want to focus instead on the cool occurrence of synchronicity and coincidence. How we experience events in our lives and should give them more attention. At least acknowledge them. I feel such events show the inherent interconnectedness of life. That all things are related. It actually seems to be a form of quantum entanglement, to use a more officially acceptable term:

Whatever happened to one particle would thus immediately affect the other particle, wherever in the universe it may be. Einstein called this “Spooky action at a distance.”

Amir D. Aczel, Entanglement, The Greatest Mystery In Physics.

In fact, as I wrote this, and scrolled down the page that is hyperlinked above, I literally set my eyes on FIgure 5.2, at the bottom, just as the words “a little fuzzy” came from the TV in the next room. There was an other “Mayhem” commercial on, with Mayhem sitting on a roof as a new satellite dish that then fell off the roof and onto the home owner’s car.

This is what I’m talking about. This stuff happens to me–us–all the time. In fact, as I started work on this post yesterday I found an old webpage I had years ago where I tracked a bunch of synchroncities. I’ve added back to my website. Check it out.

Perhaps it shows that there is a “river of themes” that runs throughout our lives (as I write this, a commercial for a rescue swimmer is on TV…). That there is energy in the background of our lives that attracts related events…or causes them. I don’t feel this is a useless nothing, but just one more method to show us all that we are all connected to this river. We all have our own rivers, and they cross and merge with each other. So, if this does happen…if all things are related…must that also mean that all our acts affect all other acts? In other words, everything affects everything?

What we think affects what others think? What we do (and this we do know) affects what others do?

Okay, so, maybe you’re not exactly onboard with the “what we think affects what others think,” but surely you can see the second part? That how we act out in the world affects others? That if we treat someone with respect, that might make another feel good about themselves, and how they, in turn, might behave in a more positive way than if we dismissed them or dumped on them? How if we picked up a piece of trash in our way, it bettered the world–and another might have seen this, and do the same thing themselves?

At the very least, synchronistic and coincidental events are fascinating. Even if we can’t explain them, they get us to thinking–dare I say, exercise our imagination?

So, if you take anything away from this post, take away to try to be more mindful of your day and these little instances of curious synchronicity. If anything, it might make your day a little more fun…looking for stuff peeking out from behind the curtain of life….