Synchronicity is one of my favorite of the Jungian concepts that I learned growing up. In short, it is Jung's idea that coincidences are sometimes so improbable -- and mimic one's deepest desires or thoughts so perfectly, without any causal relation -- that they become more than just garden variety coincidences. They become meaningful.
To explain why he thought these incredible coincidences happened, Jung invoked an intangible connection between mind and matter: "Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing."
Ever since I was introduced to the idea of synchronicity as a kid, I identified "meaningful coincidences" in my life somewhat often. I'd see the initials of someone I had a crush on everywhere or a rare book I was looking for would appear randomly on the sidewalk. It's true these amazing coincidences and connections usually happened after I had drank too much coffee or was in the throes of being in love, but still, these experiences made me consider that the world was capable of magic and that somehow my mind was connected to that thing often referred to by alternative thinkers and regular marijuana users as The Universe.
Just recently, I had another brush with the oneness of existence. This time, it involved a beautiful bespectacled brunette, a former server at my local breakfast spot.
I was working on one of the relationship columns I write for The Globe and Mail, this one about men's attraction to and fantasies about waitresses. I included anecdotes from a couple servers, one of my own stories, and also scored an interview with a psychoanalyst who, along with having a proclivity for phallic puns, was able to adeptly explain how a man's Oedipal longings could make him fall for a woman who provides food. But my main conclusion was that, despite this attraction, a man should not try to actually pick up his waitress, and instead see the exchange for what it was: friendly flirtation, mostly for the sake of running a business.
There was one anecdote of my own that didn't make the cut -- the one where I almost went against my own advice. At the aforementioned local breakfast spot, the purview of my column once sparked up a conversation with the aforementioned brunette behind the counter. She'd been working there a little while and we'd chatted a couple times before.
"What are you writing about this time?" she asked me.
"Sober hook ups," I said. "People seem to always get drunk in order to build up the courage to make a move on someone they just met, but do people ever hook up when sober?"
"Well, sure," she said. "If there's an attraction and an immediate connection, why not? I would."
"I agree," I replied. "And the fear involved in not having alcohol as a crutch could be a powerful aphrodisiac."
"I don't know if there has to be fear involved," she said. "I mean, unless you have a resistance to expressing yourself."
The conversation continued on in this vein over the course of a few visits, but before I had found the right moment to ask her out for a drink, she quit. (I had been planning on suggesting we go for tea.) And just like that, a possible romance -- or a sober hook up, at least -- vanished back into the universe.
Four months passed.
I was at a café, finishing up my article about waitresses. I didn't have enough space to include the anecdote about Sober Hook Up Girl -- as she had been so named when I told the story to friends -- but was typing my conclusion when who walks in but Sober Hook Up Girl herself, the muse to my musing, the very personage of the paragraph that I had wanted to write.
Hello synchronicity, my old friend.
It was meant to be. Right?
When I saw her, I wondered what I would say when she asked what I was writing about. "You" seemed a little too forward.
After a minute of pretending to very carefully read over something on my computer screen, I turned around and waved to her. She came over. We caught up a little, chatted about why she had quit and what she was doing now. She told me her name.
Finally, after a few minutes, she asked me: "So, what are you writing about now?"
"Well, um... it's about..." I began, but before I could finish, a man coincidentally and quite meaningfully came up and gave her a kiss on the cheek as he handed her a latte.
"Thank you," she said to him, smiling. Then she turned to me. "What were you saying?"
"I'm writing about you," I said.
No, I didn't do that. "I'm writing about a documentary I just saw that takes a sociological look at the way waitresses interact with male patrons," I told Sober Hook Up Girl and Mr. Sober Hook Up Girl, trying to make it sound as unsexy as possible. This wasn't a lie, either. Thankfully, the article operated on a few different levels.
After they left, I turned back to my work and read over what I had just written -- my advice that a relationship with the waitress shouldn't be considered a realistic possibility.
The Universe is a good listener, I thought to myself. Sometimes, too good.
