I watched a movie tonight, at home on the TV, continuing to enjoy the balance of my birth-day. As the movie began, a woman was recording a birthday video greeting to her husband. A few minutes later, the date showed up. It was today, January the 7th.  Then with the movie still going, a few minutes later as I remarked to my partner the strange coincidence of that happening I and the actor in the movie said at precisely the same time, “January the Seventh”. Now THAT is what I call an amazing coincidence!

There is another word, not so commonly known that embraces and tries to explain the meaning of coincidence; Synchronicity. That word was coined by the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung. Put simply, Jung described Synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence of events that have no apparent cause. My experience tonight with the movie fits cleanly into that description.

But tonight’s experience of Synchronicity did not end with the movie. Because of what happened tonight with the movie I decided to write tonight’s journal/blog entry about the concept of Synchronicity. So, I sat down at my computer—but of course had to check my email first! I was happy to see an email from a dear friend who was replying to my email wherein I described the reasons behind my New Years Blog resolution regarding my drinking habits. I thought it nicely coincidental that Peter had sent me the email today because it is my birthday and he said a lot of very nice things about me. I don’t think he knew that today was my birthday, but his email certainly came in the form of what I consider to be a most wonderful and coincidental gift.

In the email, Peter also asked me if I have I ever considered going to “AA”, Alcoholics Anonymous… Well, after starting to write tonight’s entry, I knew that Carl Jung had created the description of it Synchronicity, so decided to research more of his description of it online. I found several sites describing it and of Jung online and was astonished to discover that Carl Jung, who lived in Switzerland, had indirectly but strongly influenced (through one of his former patients) the eventual creation of…you guessed it…Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States some years later!

Now, I dare you, my dear readers. Were the events that happened to me tonight not strangely coincidental? The challenge of Synchronicity is discovering the meaning of such events, but that will be the topic of another journal entry. I have been studying the concept of Synchronicity for a number of years and will eventually bring what I have learned about it to here. It’s really quite fascinating. Stay tuned!