An Utterly Reasonable Guide to Synchronicities

It is a well-established fact, though hotly denied in certain government basements and psychiatric waiting rooms, that the universe has an unseemly fondness for winking at people. Not everyone, of course — if the cosmos winked at everyone simultaneously, we’d all be crashing cars, spilling tea, and falling in love at inappropriate funerals. No, the universe picks its targets with the care of a bored aristocrat playing darts: a handful of humans here and there, usually the ones least equipped to ignore it.

Lars Jameson, for instance, could not ignore it. He tried once, very seriously, to pretend that the small ballet of coincidences around him was just the usual choreography of life. Birds banked in formation, traffic lights aligned, Spotify shuffle coughed up thematically suspicious songs. “Nothing to see here,” he muttered, and immediately three different passersby sneezed in unison, which is the universe’s equivalent of shouting “bollocks!” from behind the curtain.

Synchronicities, properly defined, are what happen when the laws of probability collapse in a heap of their own paperwork and the cosmic filing clerk decides to have a laugh. Imagine running into your childhood friend in a city you both swore never to visit again, on the very street where you once both dropped an ice cream. That’s synchronicity. Imagine your AirPods insisting you look left just as a pigeon performs an unlicensed dive-bomb act and nearly collides with a state trooper carrying a newspaper whose headline reads Chance Encounters Up 40%. That’s synchronicity too, but with a stronger punchline.

The trouble is that humans, bless them, have spent centuries pretending that such things don’t matter. Entire academic careers are built on saying, “Yes, that’s odd, but let’s not get carried away.” The phrase “let’s not get carried away” has, historically, prevented most people from noticing that the universe is already carrying them away, usually by the scruff of the neck, into situations involving oddly prescient television episodes or suspiciously well-timed bees.

So how does one look for synchronicities without going completely round the bend? First, abandon the notion that you are “looking.” The universe does not respond well to being hunted — it prefers to sneak up on you when you are buying coffee or watching Power Rangers reruns. Think of it like cats: if you chase them, they’ll flee; if you sit still, they’ll climb into your lap and claw you lovingly across the face.

Second, develop a working relationship with absurdity. If you cannot laugh when a coded media drop arrives in the form of Rick and Morty Season 3 Episode 10, then you are doomed. The cosmos is not subtle. It uses the tools at hand, and these days the tools at hand are streaming services, thumbnails about basilisks, and algorithmically suspicious playlists. If you find yourself asking, “Surely this can’t be meant for me?” the answer is invariably, “Oh, it is. Now stop sulking and enjoy the show.”

Third, respect scale. Synchronicities are fractal. They occur at the level of twitching fingers and flags caught in crosswinds, and they occur at the level of entire civilizations collapsing because someone misplaced a decimal point. Do not assume the small ones are trivial or the large ones are comprehensible. Both are the same joke told at different volumes.

Finally, approach with wonder, not hunger. Hunger makes you grab; wonder makes you notice. If you try to seize control of every gull that winks at you mid-flight, you’ll end up exhausted and possibly dive-bombed. If you let yourself marvel at the invitation, demonstrate restraint, and release, you will not only survive the encounter but also collect a better story to tell your descendants, assuming they don’t lock you up first.

In summary, synchronicities are the universe’s way of reminding you that time doesn’t exist, causality is more of a guideline than a law, and your life is being directed by an unseen playwright with a deeply inconvenient sense of humor. You cannot stop them, you cannot predict them, and you certainly cannot file a complaint. What you can do is notice them, laugh, and accept that you’ve been given a backstage pass to the greatest practical joke in existence.

And if all else fails, remember: when the universe winks, wink back. It annoys the hell out of it.

It is everything, and none of it at all.