Synchronicity

At first, it was once in a while. Then it would happen a few times a week. Now, it’s almost every day. I’m talking about premonitions. I get them concerning people, places, and things. For instance, a person will come to mind I haven’t talked to in years, and suddenly I hear from them. Or I’ll think of a phrase and hear it repeated within hours.

This happened the other day when I thought of the adage, “A fool and his money are soon parted.” It was on my mind because, not long ago, I handed over a twenty-dollar bill and a chocolate bar to some guy making the rounds in my neighborhood. He was smooth–did a sort of Bojangles bit and then hit me up for money (I threw in the chocolate bar). It’s not that I’m a soft touch. I just hadn’t contributed to the collection plate at church in a while, so I figured I was due. Haven’t seen the guy since, although I’ve heard the phrase repeated twice now.

The founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, described these experiences as “meaningful coincidences,” eventually working out a theory of synchronicity, which is not an expensive timepiece but a phenomenon that occurs when our inner world syncs up with the outer one, even if only for a moment, as happened to me and my money. Jung believed the integration of the conscious and unconscious parts of the self was the task of a lifetime, making it of vital importance but also meaning you never quite arrive.

Synchronicity isn’t uncommon, but some people remain skeptical. They think these coincidences have no special meaning but are just that–coincidences. Maybe the fact that they are occurring regularly means that I am looking for them or creating patterns that don’t actually exist. That could be. Confirmation bias is real. I think back to a character I created in The Gringo who was convinced that the number 1961 was magical, because it looks the same upside down as right side up. It was also the year he was born.

But I can’t ignore data points, either. They exist. I haven’t gone so far as to graph them, but a typical example is what occurred while preparing for this post, which I didn’t decide on until two days ago. I came across the famous case of a patient of Jung who had a dream about a scarab beetle. Jung analyzed the dream to help her get over her suffocating rational mindset.

Later that day, I discovered a dead beetle in my backyard, still twitching. Then another and another. It was like the opening of Camus’ The Plague, with dead rats. That night, I settled down to a Netflix movie about Earth being attacked. The invaders turned out to be massive, armored beetles. I had to wait four episodes to find that out. These beetles were controlled by a humanoid race known as “Hands.” The Hands, in turn, were controlled by another species known only as “They.”

Great.

That’s a lot of control and conspiracy going on, although I’m not interested in analyzing the movie. In fact, I turned it off in disgust once the space invaders showed their compound eyes and swarmed the city, peeling open trains full of people like sardine cans. They looked ridiculous–like gigantic, drab ladybugs.

My dream life has been active as well—no surprise there. What did surprise me was a recent dream in which a mustached father figure in a fedora and wool suit led me by the hand to South America. The dream even had a backdrop: a black-and-white map of the continent, the kind they used in movies from the 1940s.

So, I used to wear fedoras. I also wrote another novel called Laura Fedora, the second installment in The Gringo trilogy. The trilogy actually contains two books, but that’s another story. As if that weren’t enough (it isn’t), the Netflix movie takes place in Argentina, pibe.

It’s not much of a stretch to see that the ground is shifting beneath my feet. Judging from recent events in the news, I can safely say I am not alone in this, but that’s a good thing. Transformation requires a few broken eggs. Something like that. Still, I’ll be interested to see if I hear from a certain somebody.

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