Synchronicity... [meaningful coincidences] who has experienced it?

[Vexr]

I've considered giving examples in this post, but they're tough to break down. The clearest one I've had was extremely harmful to someone else but saw me clear of trouble thanks to it.

Perhaps those who are aware of the Jungian idea of synchronicity will have something to say...

 

[Akagi]

I have experienced this sort of thing on one or two occasions, but I'm still confident that the concept of synchronicity is a load of rubbish.

Most recent example, I bought a Volvo with lacquer peel on a front quarter panel, moments afterwards I saw a Facebook post about the Volvo600 world record breaking event taking place on the same day, so I went straight there. I was then positioned behind someone who mentioned off-hand that they have a replacement panel they can give me, I asked where they live, and they lived about 10 miles away from my house.

 

[Rroff]

I've had a few instances where I've bought things either seemed like a good idea at the time but then never used them and I'm not even sure why I bought them or they've come bundled with another item that I wanted or something like that and then months or years down the line they've been exactly what is needed in an emergency or having them there on the spot has saved the day or some other unlikely perfect use for them has arisen at random, etc. but a completely random item that you wouldn't think to have lying around just in case, etc. to the point some of my friends jokingly think I can see the future.

 

[Vexr]

I appreciate the above responses, though I hinted that there was something far darker that hurt someone regarding my first synchronicity...

I was in college, but my second year started to fall apart due to attendance after my college gf ditched me (this was apparently devastating at the time). As my attendance went awry, my sociology tutor said they're filing their 'formal warning form' or whatever: I said fine. Then my business studies tutor threw one in there, completely to my surprise as I thought I was keeping up appearances in that class. At this stage I was summoned to the principals office (of a 2000+ student 6th form college along with my Dad - my God he wasn't happy).

Then my psychology tutor encountered me in the atrium and said that this was it, you better attend my next class and be 100% attendance going on, or I'm recommending you for expulsion.

I missed her next class, but attended the next one. (I'll qualify that I was going through a very difficult time in that period and lived about 1.5 hours bus ride away at 17 y/o.).

When I went to the next class, I was greeted by a substitute teacher telling us our psychology tutor had a very very serious premature birth at 20 wks or so, and would likely be off indefinitely with a very tragic situation.

I continued through the rest of the year (badly) but got in to my university of choice, where I eventually got a 2:1 degree in psychology.

If it wasn't for my college psych tutor's surprise premature birth and horrific hardship, she'd have made good on her threat to have me booted from her course, and combining with other factors, I'd have been expelled from college, and so I'd never have got to university.

Here I am today, wondering WTF my 2:1 degree is composed of (the blood of the innocent perhaps?).

There've been further synchronicities. Fate has been very strange multiple times - often cruel but sometimes good in hours of need, but none so dramatic and life changing as my college years I feel.

- this is coming from someone who has experienced multiple contract-expiring job losses and non-fault write off car crashes in just the last 3 years. Really really wondering WTF is going on.

 

[AndyCr15]

I wont lie, I hadn't really heard of synchronicity before. Google tells me the difference between that and conincedence is "Coincidence and synchronicity are both defined as “striking occurrences of two or more events at one time”. The difference is that coincidence is perceived as chance or luck while synchronicity implies the presence of a deeper intelligence at work." I get the one event is the premature birth. What exactly is the second event? To me it just looks like you 'got lucky' and benefited from it?

 

[Vexr]

5am post-pints on a Saturday morning I posted that and it's even worded as if I was 17 years old again lol. Still a true story though.

I wont lie, I hadn't really heard of synchronicity before. Google tells me the difference between that and conincedence is "Coincidence and synchronicity are both defined as “striking occurrences of two or more events at one time”. The difference is that coincidence is perceived as chance or luck while synchronicity implies the presence of a deeper intelligence at work." I get the one event is the premature birth. What exactly is the second event? To me it just looks like you 'got lucky' and benefited from it?

A search engine definition isn't going to be too useful I'd have thought; you have to go into slightly shadier parapsychology territory like here for much discussion:

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_synchronicity.htm

Even I'll admit there's quite a lot of nonsense amongst some of those articles, but some stuff I can resonate with.

I suppose another major one for me was when the company I worked for closed, and I'd already been 'just about managing' living hand to mouth with a practically 0 bank balance, but then my landlord announced they were selling my flat (albeit not evicting me first). This looked very possibly like the end, with definite thoughts of homelessness and destitution looming large.

Two days later, opened up my mail and there was a cheque for £2.2k. Turns out the Co-Op bank had misworded something or other regarding my Career Development Loan (paid off a couple of years before this situation), and were therefore refunding all interest on it. That definitely arrived in my hour of need.

There's been other more evil 'synchs'. I remember being late for work once (by like 45 mins - an unheard of thing for me). On stopping at a pedestrian crossing, I was aware someone had just stopped short next to me pushing a pram. It was only my blooming ex, obviously having recognised me. We ended badly and I always regretted not giving her the chance she said I should've given her, and this felt like a synchronistic-style punishment, reminding me of perhaps the young family life we may have had together, that she then had with someone else.

That was a very hard day to get through at work, as that moment seemed to reopen a lot of wounds and involve some serious introspection. And yet it was ludicrously improbable we should've come together like that at a pedestrian crossing, especially as it involved me being massively uncharacteristically late for work (and not like it was outside my front door, I had a car journey first).

 

[new boy]

I think it's strange that you think these events revolve around you. They don't even seam particularly unlikely. You were having a bad day and you saw your ex and wondered what your life would have been like if you had stayed with her? It's hardly final destination level stuff tbh.

 

[LuckyBenski]

I dunno, in the general sense I think a lot of stuff "Just happens" to me which is perfectly fitting. Almost always good though. I've found money in the street at the exact time I needed it (even to the exact amount). That's happened several times. I often have exactly the right spare part/number of screws/random piece of data needed to a do a job perfectly in weird situations. I was once talking about how to set up my new studio and saying "I guess what I need is a big corner desk. I'm sure one will turn up" walking to the shops. As I rounded a bend mid-sentence, I saw two pristine corner desks thrown out from an office.

I mostly put it down to luck, although my luck is very perfectly timed and does appear to be magic to others. I prefer the name Lucky Benski to Magic Benski though

 

[Russinating]

Nope, total rubbish.

How often do you stop during the day and ask yourself how many things haven't lined up/been a coincidence? We only remember the times it does and of those they're all just confirmation bias.

You also make your own luck.

 

[Vexr]

I think it's strange that you think these events revolve around you. They don't even seam particularly unlikely. You were having a bad day and you saw your ex and wondered what your life would have been like if you had stayed with her? It's hardly final destination level stuff tbh.

I think nothing revolves around me generally, but there are some surgical-strike-like coincidences that seem to have significant meaning. How you can dismiss any of the above as 'not unlikely' is pretty preposterous to me. Each example I've given with their timing is minuscule odds-wise, particularly the first one, which may have had the highest stakes.

Digging through the barrel here, and this is probably unrelated to synchronicity, but in year 10 of high school my classmate flicked a piece of paper my way across my face. I immediately noticed something was wrong with the vision in my right eye, though I hadn't felt any discomfort/pain.

Turns out my right contact lens had been removed by this piece of paper from my friend and was now perched on the edge of this sheet of A4. So somehow a papercut to the eye had been averted or something by the mm barrier of a contact lens.

Life is too random, yet strange but true.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Just LOL if you don't think Jung was gangsta but dude was trippin balls when he went on his synchro deal.

 

[Vexr]

Just LOL if you don't think Jung was gangsta but dude was trippin balls when he went on his synchro deal.

Right on, Pinkman *fistbump*

 

[Meddling-Monk]

More coincidence than synchronicty:

My father was born on a certain date in another country back many decades ago. The date got converted to another date since they were young (it happens, especially back then). He was cremated and ashes laid to rest on those exact days he was born (and the date it was converted to afterwards). Adding more irony, he had once a long time ago, asked what a particular store outlet was whilst waiting for public transport. It turned out the outlet was the office of the exact Funeral Directors who ended up as the ones that handled his passing for the family.

High coincidence? Yep. Synchronicity? Doubt it.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

You have an Alanis Morissette understanding level of the word irony my dude.

e: and why on earth wasn't she encouraged by her management team to follow up that song with its sequel: 'No, it's not'. That's the old one-two which the world demanded

 

[Vexr]

You have an Alanis Morissette understanding level of the word irony my dude.

e: and why on earth wasn't she encouraged by her management team to follow up that song with its sequel: 'No, it's not'. That's the old one-two which the world demanded

No idea what you're on about, but my earlier referral to Pinkman reminds me of Breaking Bad and its reliance on synchroncity as a plot device (as opposed to the Deus Ex Machina plot furthering trope). I'm pretty sure I read something a while back pointing out the synchs for Breaking Bad, though can't find it off the top of a quick google search.

Some obvious ones though:

• The recurring painting of a man in a skiff rowing himself away from the shore as his family waves goodbye
• The synchronicity that Walter ended up in exactly the position to watch Jane at the moment of her death, and have the decision to make to save her or not
• The roll-on synchronicity that Walter's failure to act regarding Jane's death resulted in the air traffic control accident that caused a massive death toll (and the extreme unlikelihood he unwittingly met Jane's father in a bar, somewhere he'd never usually go to, at a pivotal time)
• Slight roll over synchronicity regarding how Walter was eventually ID'd by Hank (Gael Boetticher's revenge from beyond the grave)
  
• I suppose there was another narrative running through Breaking Bad to do with the almost Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy of 'let go and give up to a higher power' - Walter White encountered someone expositing that philosophy in a chemo session and retorted that was all BS and tightening control and logical/rational mastery of oneself was all that counted. Quite a divisive thing against the one thing the US is alleged to have brought to the world spiritually, which is AA and other 12 step programs.

 

[Efour]

Sounds like you have to believe in some bigger divine guidance for this to work, which is why it's sadly complete bs and the stuff of TV fantasy.

 

[Teh_Next]

I thought it was an album by The Police.

 

[AndyCr15]

The synchronicity that Walter ended up in exactly the position to watch Jane at the moment of her death, and have the decision to make to save her or not

• The roll-on synchronicity that Walter's failure to act regarding Jane's death resulted in the air traffic control accident that caused a massive death toll (and the extreme unlikelihood he unwittingly met Jane's father in a bar, somewhere he'd never usually go to, at a pivotal time)

I guess I don't understand synchronicity then. For one, even the name suggests it's more than one thing happening at the same time. Walter being there at that time is just one event surely, led by luck? I guess you could argue him being there is one event, her in trouble is a second. The resulting air traffic accident is something based from a previous event and then he meets the guy by luck in a bar at another time.

 

[Vexr]

I guess I don't understand synchronicity then. For one, even the name suggests it's more than one thing happening at the same time. Walter being there at that time is just one event surely, led by luck? I guess you could argue him being there is one event, her in trouble is a second. The resulting air traffic accident is something based from a previous event and then he meets the guy by luck in a bar at another time.

I suppose Walter's reflection in S3E10 acknowledges his synchronicity about as well as can be done:

Walter:
Oh, I know the moment. It was the night Jane died. I was at home and we needed diapers and so I said I'd go, but it was just an excuse. Actually that was the night I brought you your money, remember?

Jesse:
Yeah. I remember.

Walter:
And afterward I stopped at a bar. It was odd, I never do that - go to a bar alone. I just walked in, sat down. I never told you.

Jesse:
You went to a bar?

Walter:
I sit down and this man, this stranger, he engages me in conversation. He's a complete stranger. But he turns out to be Jane's father, Donald Margolis.

Jesse:
What are you talking about?

Walter:
Of course I didn't know it at the time. I mean, he's just some guy in a bar. I just didn't put it together until after the crash when he was all over the news.

Jesse:
Jane's dad?

Walter:
Think of the odds. Once I tried to calculate them, but they're astronomical. I mean, think of the odds of me going in and sitting down that night, in that bar, next to that man.

Jesse:
What'd you talk about?

Walter:
Water on Mars. Family.

Jesse:
What about family?

Walter:
I told him that I had a daughter and he told me he had one, too. And he said, "Never give up on family." And I didn't. I took his advice. My God, the universe is random, it's chaos. It's subatomic particles and endless pings, collision - that's what science teaches us. What does this say? What is it telling us that the very night that this man's daughter dies, it's me who is having a drink with him? I mean, how could that be random?

 

[LuckyBenski]

Can this not be a spoilers thread please? I ignored the first couple of references as relevant to discussion but now I have to skim posts, because it's taking me 10 years to watch Breaking Bad