Synchronicity
If my friend hadn’t got the flu I may never have met the man I love. Instead of spending the day with her as planned I went on a friend’s boat where I met him, and so it began. A chance encounter or meaningful coincidence?
Why is it that some people spend every spare moment trawling through matchmaking websites yet still can’t find anyone to even go to dinner with while others meet the love of their life by accident at the supermarket? CNN News Anchor Rosemary Church met her husband one Christmas lunch. They hooked up two years later and were engaged after just four days. In the book, ‘How We Met’, every story shows how seemingly inconsequential moments can inspire serendipitous meetings. Maggie Alderson blames a pair of boots bought on a whim for meeting her second husband. Film producer, Margaret Fink, met the love of her life at 19 after being taken to his home by a friend. Jessica Adams was reunited with her ex 20 years after they first met as flatmates. ‘Soul mates are repeatedly thrown together by the gods,’ she says. ‘Until they find each other.’
Taking heed of coincidences is the new model for living our lives. While previous generations were stuck in accepting their lot and assuming things were governed by fate, we’re taught everything happens for a reason. We live in the age of synchronicity where coincidences aren’t written off as meaningless trite occurrences to forget about but rather deep and significant pointers to where our life could lead if we just pay attention.
The Celestine Prophecy started it. It was to the self awareness world what, say, Phil Collins was to the music world. Everyone had a copy, whether they admit it or not. It wasn’t new (synchronicity was Carl Jung’s idea) but it was packaged in a way that appealed to the masses. The Celestine Prophecy became the number one international best seller of its time selling 20 million copies around the world, success Phil Collins could only dream of.
There’s now a mass synchronicity movement and I am on the fringe. I read M. Scott Peck, The Alchemist and The Power of Now. I have Shakti Gawain in the car and The Secret. I scored tickets to the Dalai Lama and went to Deepak Chopra, Neale Donald Walsch and What The Bleep. And I have seats for James Redfield who, 15 years after he wrote his parable of coincidences, is en route to Australia, followed closely by Dan Millman of Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
But it’s all very well to espouse synchronicity when you’ve seen the evidence. What hope for those for whom nothing is panning out? I ask James Redfield if it’s possible to facilitate finding love. ‘Become like the person you want to attract’, he says. ‘If you want someone who’ll make you feel secure, work to become secure within yourself. If you want someone who is courteous and charming, cultivate these traits in your own personality. Then you’ll be compatible with that person when they enter your life.’
Even relationships that don’t last were meant to be. ‘Sometimes people enter our world to teach us something rather than to be our life partner’, says James. ‘It’s important to search our intuitions and discern between the two.’
It’s hard to know which way to turn when there’s a polar opposite theory that we should get proactive about finding love. Where’s the happy medium between synchronicity and manipulating our affairs? Is a blind date set up by your mum destiny or desperate? Stay alert, James Redfield advises, and you can spot the difference. ‘Faithful expecting helps bring the right people to us at the right time. The important areas of life are always full of meaningful coincidences.’
Which doesn’t mean it won’t happen on RSVP.com or at the car wash. If that’s how it’s meant to be.