Have you seen this movie?  Essentially it’s about the notion of what your life would be like if you made a right turn or a left turn at a particular moment.  The people you might meet.  The experiences you might have.  Sort of the serendipity of life.

What about the uncanny coincidences of our experiences?  We’ve all had it happen.  For example, I think of someone, maybe someone I’ve not talked with in years, and then hours later, he calls.  Or you hear a very unusual phrase three times within an hour from three different people.  What about the people who come into your life at the very moment that you need them or you meet someone by chance and you almost didn’t go to the place/event in the first place.

Is this just the law of averages playing itself out?  Or is it what Carl Jung believed was the underlying order of the universe – Synchronicity.  Jung said that this underlying connectedness manifests itself through meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect. Such synchronicities occur, he theorized, when a strong need arises in the psyche of an individual.  Hey!  I’ve got some strong needs in my psyche! 🙂

I’m sure my dad’s got a stomach ache as he reads this (he’s a scientist). But Dad, some scientists see a theoretical grounding for synchronicity in quantum physics, fractal geometry and chaos theory. They are finding that the isolation and separation of objects from each other is more apparent than real.  At deeper levels, everything — atoms, cells, molecules, plants, animals, people — participate together in the flow of our universe.  For example, physicists have shown that if two photons are separated, no matter by how far, a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other.  What’s that all about?

What ever it is – I believe in it.  I’ve had the most unusual experiences with people that I know come into my life for a reason (even when I wish they hadn’t).  Maybe they are there for me, maybe for them, maybe for the “us” … or maybe something bigger than us.  Thinking this way, gives me a sense of hope.  A sense of something bigger than me – whatever that might be.

In Sliding Doors, although we see the female lead go two different ways, she ultimately ends up with the same person.  Maybe in life, we have the chance to go right or left, but in the end – it’s a big circle and we end up in the same place … just with different experiences.

Maybe synchronicities are simply a wink from the cosmos.  A chance to stop and think about the world around us and how we fit in.  So, when you start singing that stupid song in your mind and then hours later you go to the store and hear it playing – stop for a minute.  Smile to yourself, wonder how it all works and remind yourself, what fun it is to be here!

Have an amazing weekend!