Synchronicity

On the same day my son returned to school (or would have, if not for the heat and school cancellations), I returned to work.  Though I had been working part-time all summer, I received an offer for a full-time position at the end of August.  My first layoff and summer of unemployment was a journey, one which forced me to grow a lot, but also one which made me question the force behind synchronicity. For several years I have had a lot of faith in synchronicity--for me it has served as proof of a force at work in the world which scientists have yet to understand.  Though at times I do question whether synchronicity is a figment of my imagination, the more common theme for me this year was whether I had been forsaken by the force which had blessed me with synchronicity.  (By the way, I know this terminology sounds vaguely religious.  I'm not trying to hint that I know what's behind synchronicity.  I have no idea.  But my feelings about the forces at work in the world are likely

I was laid off in May and have been unemployed for two months.  So now I understand a little bit better what people have been going through the last several years.  I still haven't lost my insurance or unemployment benefits, so I still don't really understand. But I've gone from barely scraping by to not quite.  I still don't know what poverty is and I still don't know how bad it can get, but I'm beginning to understand how it feels to not be able to pay all my bills in a month.  It still feels like a social experiment, like the experiment undertaken by Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickle & Dimed , when she pretends not to have her educational background and spends a year working in minimum wage jobs (she tries working at Walmart, as a waitress, and as a maid cleaning houses and hotel rooms) and tries to make ends meet without using any of her usual resources. So I'm grinning like the Cheshire cat...just waiting for everything to fall into place.  Because I

On June 3rd, my son started drawing a symbol, as far as I can tell, out of the blue, and there was something supernatural about the way he did it which forced me to take note.   I kept thinking to myself that it was like a horror movie when a kid starts drawing the same symbol over and over and no one can figure out what it means until the big reveal later in the movie.  He continued drawing the symbol exclusively for two days--and mysteriously, stopped right after I discovered a synchronous connection.  It still gives me goosebumps, a month later.  My son's typical picture is a bunch of  scribbles, but for two days last month he suddenly began,  without a moment's hesitation, to draw a circle with a cross in it over and over again and then stopped just as suddenly.   When I asked him what it was he told me that it was a window.  So I looked around at the windows in the room where he started drawing them (the basement of a university building)--they were all rectangular wit

I've been reading a lot this year.  I recently finished The Left Hand of Darkness and Wuthering Heights, and yesterday moved on to Beloved.  In the book Sethe describes rememories to her daughter Denver.  She says that the things which happen to us and our memories are never erased, that they live on and are connected to the landscape.  She says that sometimes you are walking and start to see things happening around you--those are rememories of others which they have left behind. Sethe says: "If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place-the picture of it-stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think about it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there." I'm also reading a (really poorly written) book about astral projection and the author describes something similar existing on the astral plane--the thoug

This week, on June 2nd, my son was telling me he wants to learn about Asia. He said he'd been learning about different places in the world at school, but he didn't learn anything about Asia. I pulled up a map of Asia in Google Maps and then decided to see where Google has street view. For those who aren't aware, if you are in Google maps, you can pick up the orange figure of a person which is in the left side of the screen (at the top of the zoom feature) and start to drag it over the map; as you do this, some parts of the map will start to be highlighted in blue--these are the regions which have "street view". Street view is an amazing feature of Google created with a series of panoramic photos taken by vehicles on the road (all done by volunteers, I believe) all over the world. It also includes panoramic photos of the interiors of some buildings so that you can take a virtual tour. Anyway, I zoomed out so that a good portion of the earth was visible on the scree

I'm going to quote again the book "Synchronicity & You", which reports that of the 100 people the author interviewed, a significant percentage say that they have tended to notice more synchronicity in their lives during times of transition and change. And I again find myself in a moment of transition and blessed by synchronicity.  "It's all going to come together"; I have been encountering this phrase over and over, and I feel perfectly confident that it will. Here's what I can say: Synchronicity has saved my life, made me human, connected me to something greater than myself--in the concrete and the abstract. In this moment during which change is washing over me from every direction, I feel like a rock--no matter what happens, I am me and I trust in myself to make the correct decisions (aided by synchronicity of course).    

Something odd has happened twice in the last week. I've thought about someone who I haven't seen/heard from in a long while, only to have them contact me the next day. While this is a standard example of synchronicity (the person that picks up the phone to call an old friend only to be stopped by an incoming call from the same friend.) In my case, the contact was offset by a day or more from the original urge to contact and happened via email/Facebook messages (or depending how you see it, within the dream world). Since I've rarely if ever had such an experience, I didn't realize what they would feel like. Obviously, they feel awesome, like most synchronicities. But they also feel, in my present perception, a little bit like being at the center of the universe...like the world really does revolve around me. Almost like realizing I am Truman, in the movie The Truman Show. Or like I am living in a simulated world in which my experience is really all that exists.

Last spring I attended a national medical library association conference in Seattle, Washington. A few months before the trip, I was preparing my travel plans and spent a week searching for a cheap hotel before narrowing down to one or two good options. To help cut costs further, I decided to share a room with another librarian. I used a roommate matching service provided by the association, and was matched with Carol, who had already decided on a different hotel. I agreed to go with her choice, though it was far across town and transportation would be an issue. I started to have very negative vibes about the trip, which I mentioned to a friend at work. I was worried that something bad would happen, and the idea of riding two buses or paying for a cab each way to the conference each day was weighing on me as much as the idea of sharing a room with a complete stranger. Still, I didn't want to try and change the plans so late in the game. About a week before the trip my hus

Last month $40 cash disappeared from my car.  I searched the pockets of all my jeans and coats and every nook of the car and only came up with $1 crumpled dollar (which wasn't part of the original $40, but I added it anyway).  Eventually I gave up, resigned to the fact that it was gone forever.  I don't think it was stolen, I think it either blew out when I opened the door, got mixed with one of my husband's business deposits, or hidden somewhere by my 3-year-old.  Anyway, I needed to find the money by February 9 or replace it--except I didn't have any money.  My husband offered it to me of course, but since I wasn't sure he had taken it, I didn't want it. My only hope was that someone I had done web design for would send a check (but I had little faith given that the invoice had been due for several weeks and I hadn't sent a reminder).  Each day, I crossed my fingers as I opened the mailbox--Wednesday 2/6, Thursday 2/7, and Friday 2/8.  On Friday evening,

Last night I took my 3-year-old son to an Ash Wednesday service--we go to church every year on that day only.  On the way, my son was asking me about where we were going. His first thought was that he wanted to choose the color of the ashes--no gray for him.  Then he asked what the ashes meant and I couldn't really remember but I thought maybe it had something to do with the saying "from ashes to ashes, and dust to dust".  So I told him that we all die someday and turn into dust.  He got a bit upset and said, "but I love myself, I don't want to die".  Wow.  Then he wanted to know where we go when we die.  No simple heaven and hell explanation from me--I told him that it is a mystery.  Now here's an  unexpected benefit of being involved in religion--it elevates the conversation with your kids a bit.  Not that we couldn't have the conversation without religion, but I like that it was so spontaneous.  Regardless of the fact that I consider myself a sp

Tonight I went to the final day of Sears going out of business sale. The roads were icy in the morning so I didn't get there until about 4 PM (with the idea that they would be closed at 5 PM--but in the end, they stayed open until pretty much everything was gone, at about 6 PM). On Friday night we had stopped and saw that they still had nice coats, a pergola, electric lawn mowers and snow throwers, etc. and I had meant to return just to get a coat. But when I arrived just before closing time I found that about all the shelves had been stripped clean, save for a bit of overstock (toilet seat covers but no coordinating rugs, pillow cases but no sheets, lamp bases but no shades, single panels of curtains in each color, some clothes, and some fine jewelry--all in all, lots of odds and ends.) I spent an hour carefully picking out a pair of pants, a package of pantyhose, and two curtain panels. I paid and was surprised at the value--it totaled something like $12. As I was wal

Many times in the last year at work I have been in the process of taking messages from voicemail when the other line rings and it is the person (whose message I was listening to) calling back. Now, this is not all that strange (timing is natural, the person is simply trying to contact me again after a few hours). However, I have noticed that the second call usually comes in at the same time I am trying to figure out how to replay the message to get some detail I missed.  So picture this: me, sitting and staring kind of stupidly at my phone (I have never in the last year figured out how to replay a message on this voicemail software, but it doesn't stop me from trying to "remember" how to do it every time) and thinking really hard about the person whose message I've just listened to, when I'm interrupted by a call from them.  It happens so regularly that it has stopped seeming wierd.  I mean, I used to count it as a synch every time, but then I got so used to it t

This morning, Monday January 7th, I remembered after crossing the parking ramp and starting down the stairs to head into work that I'd intended to bring a digital timer (a stopwatch, basically) which was sitting in the backseat of my car. I debated about going back during lunch vs. going back right then and decided that since I was already late I better forget about it for the time being. Once I got into the building I reached into my bag for my ID badge. Right in the front pocket was the timer I'd wanted to go back for. I must have avoided procrastination when I'd seen it in the back seat on Saturday night and stuck it in there, thinking it would be useful to have at work. The moment I saw it, I grinned from ear to ear: the memory of what had happened in the middle of the night the day before came back to me. My husband went to Walmart in Coralville, Iowa around 3 AM on Sunday January 6th (it's the closest place to get groceries on Sundays when our local grocery