I live for coincidences ever so present throughout my life. Daily life can be full of them. Reading, for example, the same unusual word in three consecutive articles the same morning, back-to-back: Serendipity… That word again! First, I thought, hmm, interesting coincidence. I pondered on its meaning briefly, but then disregarded it and continued writing and editing my text on the desktop.
I bumped into a childhood friend while on a business trip. I travelled from the city where I live, London, UK, to Paris, France. I raced to the office when a smiling face waved at me: Nathalie. School teenager friends from about two decades before. Nathalie, grinning, confused my name with another friend’s name, I pictured that friend. I also remembered Nathalie right away: her petite physique, her unique facial features, voice, and manners unchanged. We stood aside for a rapid catch-up and exchanged phone numbers. “You don’t need Facebook,” a friend commented after hearing about the encounter.
Coincidences ignite my mind. They present themselves unaltered, raw, softened, and touching. Are they premonitions, I wonder? What purpose do these recurring events serve, if any? They are not scientific or logical, nor do they follow any hard-fact reasoning. Yet one could infer premonition or a sign if one links a specific event with a precise fact that occurred before the event. It’s not science as one would normally describe it; but more on the unscientific premonition spectrum, if you will. If one charges coincidences with one’s special meaning, they become all too real. Those meanings depend on each individual.
In a sea of things happening around you, pick one. “It’s a sign!” A sign of what? Countless signs yield countless meanings. Some folks are more sensitive to them than others. One can find meaning in absolutely everything. This realm is far beyond logic, though.
I touched upon a theory incorporating coincidences while studying psychology. Carl Jung’s work. I learned little about Jung’s thoughts at university in reality, since my uni was heavily Freudian. My friend and I went on reading further to supplement the sparse lectures on Jung: the meagre seminars gave us an appetite for more. We read about anima, animus, Jung’s archetypes. We found ourselves more aligned with his theories than with his established counterpart’s Freudian theories.
Then, Jung’s synchronicity surfaced. Synchronicity, an Acausal Connecting Principle, was defined by Jung as follows: “… Internal, psychological events are linked to external world events by meaningful coincidences rather than causal chains.” Two events occur that are seemingly connected, not by causality, but by a shared significance between the psyche and the cosmos. For example, I sit next to my phone, it starts ringing, a call comes through. One thinks about a friend, and that friend gets in touch soon after. This defies logical explanation.
Jung also stated: “I have invented the word synchronicity as a term to cover … things happening at the same moment as an expression of the same time content”. Coincidences, as far as I can gather, are part of the wider context of synchronicity. His theory sheds light on a random occurrence that hard science is unwilling or unable to explain. Jung’s analysis hints at a deeper, more symbolic interpretation.
Connecting our psyche with external reality through coincidences ~ or synchronicity ~ suggests an underlying cosmic order beyond our physical bodies. Even without fully grasping the mechanics of it, the sense of a deeper psychic link can evoke a strong feeling of oneness and also a powerful sense of unity. What if we belonged to a vast universal system, a greater cosmic significance we could access? We’d then become aware of its delicate bond in our existence.
Reading the Tattooed Buddha newsletter provided some additional insights. David Jones writes: ‘Awareness can be sudden, gradual or incremental, and it may not match your expectations. Like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminds us, don’t panic. Stay open and grounded to every experience.’
Noticing coincidences around me, the perceived synchronicity opens a soft, cyclical link that incorporates us all, a gentle wave of serendipity connecting us. By tuning into those patterned events, one can experience Jungian theories manifesting in our life, and strive for a more holistic lifestyle.
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Blanche Sunrise writes flash fiction, poems, and essays. It is during lock-downs that she invested more resource into writing. A volunteer moderator and post-processor, she’s also working on a narrow-focused dictionary in English. Words in Calibre Audio and King River Press.
© 2025, Blanche Sunrise
Halfway Down the Stairs 