This is our last Newsletter of the year, and by happy coincidence it is also the 2,022nd Newsletter that we have ever sent out. Which also means that the first one of next year, will be the 2,023rd. It’s nice to notice when coincidental events happen like this, but at the same time what does it really mean?
The human mind likes to spot patterns, to look for connections and meaning in events. Looked at from an evolutionary perspective, this sense of spotting patterns perhaps helped our ancestors to survive. Is that a tiger in the grass, or just patterns of shadows? Maybe best not to wait to find out. Today, for most of us, pattern spotting for survival is less important. Instead, we see animals in clouds, faces in inanimate objects, and even connect unrelated events to form wild conspiracy theories. So is this pattern spotting tendency simply an evolutionary hold-over. Does, illogical, magical thinking hold any currency in the rationality of the 21st century. Could there be something deeper about human consciousness that is attempting to communicate with us through symbols and synchronicities. Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, coined the term synchronicity in 1930 to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related but seem to lack a causal connection. Another way of thinking about this is that we just cannot perceive the whole pattern from our physical human perspective, though sometimes we do get little glimpses of it. This story is paraphrased from Robert Hopcke’s book There Are No Accidents.
As a young teenager Sharon was baking apple pie with her grandmother. As they talked and baked her grandmother suggested that Sharon should peel an apple so as to retain the peel in one piece. Then to throw the peel over her shoulder, whilst asking in her mind what would be the first name of the man who would be her true love. Sharon did this and when she looked at the apple peel the letter it formed seemed to be a ‘P’. With thoughts of Peters and Pauls in her mind Sharon then decided to throw the peel over her shoulder again and ask for the first letter of her one true love’s second name. Once more when she turned to inspect the apple peel, the letter it formed look like a ‘P’. They both laughed, and her grandmother said maybe she would marry someone called Peter Piper and pick a peck of pickled pepper. Nevertheless, as Sharon grew up, that day baking with her grandmother stayed with her. She kept an eye out for boys with the initials P.P. Eventually though she met David, fell in love and got married. Then one year Sharon and David were helping David’s dad to clean out his attic. As they did David came across his old recorder. His dad said that when David was little he had played it incessantly, to the point that they all called him Peter Piper, even kids at school called him that too.
Carl Jung also liked to identify people who had names associated with what they did. I think these are fun to look out for. There is a TV weather presenter called Sara Blizzard. During the ‘fuel-crisis’ last year the BBC broadcast a report from a petrol station by a journalist called Phil McCann. In 2008 Bernie Madoff was arrested for ‘making-off’ with money from investors in a huge Ponzi scheme. Also, in the world of finance in January 2021 there was a short selling squeeze on a company called Game Stop, which caused a crisis for some hedge-funds. And in November this year FTX cryptocurrency exchange went bankrupt. It was run and owned by, Sam Bankman-Fried.
When synchronicities crop-up in our lives we are the ones who must find meaning in them or choose to ignore them as funny coincidences. When they appear in my life, I like to think that I am noticing part of the underlying structure of reality intruding into my consciousness. Asking me the perennial question, do you get it yet? Perhaps the 21st century isn’t going to be quite as rational as we all might like to think it is.
“In all chaos is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” Carl Jung
