synchronicity

\sing-kruh-NISS-uh-tee\

noun

1 : the quality or fact of being simultaneous

2 : the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events

First of all: thanks, Sting, for ruining this word. It's not that I don't like The Police (although I much prefer their earlier work...), I just hope that musicians realize what they're doing when they utilize a fairly uncommon word in an album title and/or the chorus of a song. The word becomes forever synonymous with said song, and a person like myself who is writing about the word will probably have that same song in her head all day. Need I remind the reader about the word copacetic.

Moving right along, there is something beautiful in the concept of SYNCHRONICITY, and it's the same thing that aesthetically pleases me about multi-tasking, parallel lines, and being able to eyeball the correct milk to cereal ratio: it's about a sort of temporal and/or physical harmony. Getting to the stop seconds before the bus arrives, having exact change, only one seat left open—for you. These things happen every day. Although I know this isn't the case, these events seem to reveal a system at work, cosmic checks and balances.

There is one instance of SYNCHRONICITY that I find particularly pleasing. Waiting in a turning lane at a red light, turn blinker on, a green arrow flashes on your dash board—click, click, click. A steady beat. The rear blinker of the car in front of you, flashing at its own steady pace, illuminating your windshield in second-long washes of red light, maybe a little slower, maybe a little faster than yours. If you're there long enough, eventually the two lights will be synchronized for one blink, like eye contact on a crowded side walk, only to pass by, and then slip again out of beat. I wait for the SYNCHRONICITY, anticipation building as the two beats grow closer together. When they meet I close my eyes, trying to meditate in the moment of harmonic coincidence. It's really...satisfying.

I engage in this temporal awareness also when riding public transit, but in this case with the spatial SYNCHRONICITY of telephone poles. For example, while passing through an intersection, I may close my eyes while a further pole and a closer pole line up in my field of vision, for the split second while the bus passes. I'm not sure of the purpose guiding my behavior. I think my efforts to close my eyes during these moments are a sort of pause, as though everything in the world is momentarily aligned, and I just want to slow down and take it all in before it inevitably falls out of place.