Synchronicity: Transcendent Design

Saved by Synchronicity

photo by Lon

A note about how synchronicity works: This neighborhood sculpture has served as a kind of metaphysical signpost; long-range design was at work in my life, even when I couldn't see it playing-out in the immediate present.

I can’t argue whether the synchronicities in my life are by design. Or rather, if they are by design, I can’t argue the purpose, or what that design might really be. But one real result of my experiences of synchronicity is that I am learning to be open to possibility. And being open to good possibilities is necessary if good things are going to happen to us.

I didn’t grow up that way. My parents were good, kind people who were given to blunt, purposeless judgments: I don’t like those flowers. That jewel has an ugly color. That’s not a very nice rainbow. I hate a rock yard.

Those are real quotations which I have been unable to forget over the years. I look back now and laugh cheerfully. The one about the rainbow just kills me. But the same attitude was inculcated in me as a child. Thankfully, I was saved by synchronicity. And I fell in love:

It was a spring day and I was driving up to my fiancée’s house. I had already sold my own house and was making plans to move in with my fiancée after the wedding. As I drove down the street, I admired the yards; they were all green except for hers. My fiancée had a rock yard.

As I pulled into the driveway, I thought about that rock yard becoming mine; I wouldn't have to mow, and that triggered a distant reflection.

Twenty years earlier, I had examined that very yard while I was in college.

My college town had over 200,000 people. And I was a small town kid who commuted to school and liked to cruise the "big-city" streets after class. I suppose I was looking for something. Pretty suspicious behavior for a bearded hippy, even if I did look like Jesus. To the neighbors, I might have been a burglar casing the neighborhood or a drug dealer stalking teenagers. But my motives were benign, if esoteric: I was looking for my future, for something good to happen to me.

". . . one real result of my experiences of synchronicity is that I am learning to be open to possibility."

There was this really ugly sculpture (yes, the irony is intentional) which someone had planted on their corner lot. I observed that sculpture, then turned on the next street and cruised the houses with suspicious-looking but innocent, if inexplicable, motive.

Halfway down the street, there was a rock yard. “I hate a rock yard,” I had once heard my dad say. That tape played in my head: I hate a rock yard, too.

But suddenly I stopped. Literally. I stopped in the street and reflected that that wasn’t me thinking; those were my dad’s thoughts. So I asked myself what I thought about that yard. What did I really think? The house itself was nice. And the yard was neat and easy to maintain. No one had to mow or irrigate. It was a xeriscape.

I decided I liked the house. More pertinently, I decided in that moment that I did not want to be a negative person. I wanted to see the good possibilities in all things. It would become a life-long ambition. The sculpture on the corner physically and temporally marked an important turning point in my psyche.

So I drove on, recognizing that my destiny had subtly changed course, though I did not at that moment consciously mark the time or place.

Most of the people who study synchronicities, including Carl Jung who invented the term, would say that synchronistic events are not separated by time. But for me, much of the meaning is due to the fact that two events are separated by time but are linked together by transcendent design. Jung would attribute this to the collective unconscious. Personally, I think we are cooperating with a transcendent designer.

So twenty years later, I started dating a beautiful girl. We got engaged.

"As I pulled into the driveway, I thought about that rock yard becoming mine . . . and that triggered a distant reflection."

Then one spring day just before our wedding, I pulled into the driveway and a distant but vivid memory connected to my present reality. The weird sculpture on the corner marked the spot: I realized that this was the very house where, while I was still in college, I had had a vital catharsis and epiphany: I am not my parents’ thoughts; I am not even my own history. I am the offspring of the eternal creator:

“I am the owner of the sphere,

Of the seven stars and the solar year,

of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain,

Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.” Emerson

And I am the owner of a lovely house with a rock yard. Inside is my beautiful girl, the one I love. Down the street and on the corner, the way is marked by a beautiful sculpture. Well, it’s not exactly beautiful. But I like it now. I give it a gentle pat each time I walk by.