What does it mean?


You've been thinking about somone. Somone you haven't heard from in weeks, months or even years, and within a short period of time you receive some kind of communication from them. Twice I received letters from a woman I had worked with years before within a day of thinking about her for the first time in a long period of time. The second instance I even stopped in front of the mailbox and had the idea that there was going to be a letter from her because it had already happened once and sure enough, there was a letter in the box. My question is obvious. What is this phenomenon that boils down to a "Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing"?

Is it God? Is it the Universe? Entanglement? Are our brains Quantum computers? Is it the "Law of Attraction"?, or is it all nothing more than a coincidence? Carl Jung called it synchronicity and it happens all the time. Does it happen to you? It happens to me and I find myself wondering "What does it mean?". Decide for yourself as you follow my diary of another "Strange Case Of Uncanny Timing", also known as a S.C.O.U.T!

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Reader contribution - Never too old to reach out and say I love you!

Michelle wrote  - O.K., here’s a weird thing that happened to me today. I was driving back from the Leesburg Wegmans, not so near my house, and in front of me was a car with a Virginia license plate that said “Kane PA”, which is a very small, rural town in Pennsylvania where Charlie’s great aunt lived her whole life and died a few years back at the age of 105. I thought that was odd enough. I tried to catch up, but lost her at a light. Then 4-5 hrs later I had to go to Tysons, went to park in my usual out of the way spot, get out of the car and right next to us is the SAME “Kane PA” car I had seen earlier. Way too coincidental. I called Charlie’s mom to tell her how freaky it was and she told me she had just been going through, and boxing up, all of Aunt Irene’s things to put them in storage. O.K., now that does it. She had to be sending us a message!

Thanks Michelle  - That’s a chiller! The chances of each of those things happening by coincidence have to be statistically impossible! Irene was clearly very old and very wise. She knew exactly how to get your attention and get you to call Charlie’s mom while she moved through the heart wrenching task of boxing up her aunts things. I have no doubt your call eased the sadness of that chore. Aunt Irene… you sly old fox! Uncanny! -

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

March 2010 - A light house shows the way home

Background - My brother began dating a woman who was coming out of a turbulent marriage and as she worked towards mutual agreement on various details with her soon to be ex-husband, the lawyers set up the arbitration date and site to begin to finalize the divorce. In need of an ear to bend, she began telling my brother where and when the meeting would be held. My brother was amused to find out that the meeting would take place not only in the building that he had worked for a good many years, but on the very floor his office had been. Both feeling the eerie connection, she continued to tell him that she has a previous attachment to this building as well. While driving home in the dark from the job she had held at the time, she would watch for the bright sign on top of this very building because it signaled that her exit was coming up. She affectionately called the building her lighthouse.

S.C.O.U.T.- As they pieced together the timing of her regular hours for that job and compared them to my brothers hours during the same period of time, they came to the conclusion that there was no doubt that my brother was in the building working as she would drive by, look up to the building, and think of her lighthouse… years before they had ever even met.

Neither could deny the feeling that there was a message in this bizarre coincidence.  A message that would instead make it a strange case of uncanny timing and signal that a neon sign isn't the only thing in this life that will light your way home.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Reader Contribution - Hebrews 11:1 and a very special mug

Maureen wrote - As you know, weird things happen to me daily; :). However just recently I was having a discussion about faith with my sister-in-law, she’s a rocket scientist. She is exploring her faith but as a scientist needs proof. As we were driving through the English countryside a bible verse popped into my head… not one that I read frequently, but I must have read it at one point. It was Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen”, and that was the end of our conversation. The next week, I go to the opening of our new church and Pastor Mintor begins his sermon with that exact verse. I suppose someone was trying to tell me something.
Also, on a recent trip to the Jersey Shore my sister and I decided to spend the weekend in Ocean Grove, a cute little Victorian town where my mother-in-law spent her childhood summers. She loved it there and would always tell me to go down and spend time there. We stayed in a bed and breakfast on the ocean… very nice. The next morning my sister went out to grab us some coffee from the hotel kitchen and she comes back to the room with the exact same mug as my mother-in-law used every morning when she was alive. It’s a unique mug, not one you would see everywhere. The hotel said they had bought it in a thrift store. It was as if she was telling me she was happy I was there! I left two wine glasses in the mugs place and took it home with me.

Thanks Maureen
- These stories gave me chills. I understand how your sister-in-law feels. That used to be me - although I’m certainly no rocket scientist! I needed proof for everything until I read a little bit about Quantum physics and learned that the best minds in the world can’t explain some of their own scientific findings. I understand that not having an explanation doesn’t mean that there isn’t one, but it makes me wonder if we're suppose to understand everything. I hope she has a few undeniable S.C.O.U.T.S. of her own, you know… one of the ones you just can’t shake off! Life is just so much more interesting when we can’t explain everything we see and have to take some of it on faith! The second story is self explanatory. What a great mother-in-law you had (have!).

Sunday, September 12, 2010

March 30, 2010 - Call the CDC... this thing's contagious!

Background - How do you know that you have a really good spouse? You can tell them anything, including the fact that your on the fast train to crazy town and there aren’t any stops to get off before you arrive. How do you know you have a really, really good spouse? When you look over and they’re in the seat next to you! You want to ask them when they bought they’re ticket, but you can tell they’re a little uneasy about this trip, so you just accept it and appreciate the company.

S.C.O.U,T. - My husband tells me one evening after work that he had a S.C.O.U.T. that day. The fact that he used my acronym made me realize just how much he loves me, and just how brave he is! He had been thinking about a friend of ours, a guy named Justin who is the manager at our local Irish pub, and how he hadn’t spoken to him for a good many weeks. He was remembering that he had told Justin that he would donate an extra TV we have for the pubs use (in exchange for a few free Guinness’s of course!) and that he needed to take care of that. He filed it away in his mental T.T.D. circular file, never to be seen again, and moved on to the next order of business. He hadn’t even begun thinking about the next item when his phone rang. He looked to see who it was and… you guessed it, “Hey Justin! This is so weird, I was just thinking about you!” What uncanny timing!

Justin did indeed get his T.V. thanks to God, the universe and the “powers that be” for tapping him on the shoulder and giving him a nudge to call Mike right at that moment. Justin got his T.V., Mike got a few free Guinness,  and I got a terrific traveling companion (: Love ya hunny!

Monday, September 6, 2010

March 18, 2010 - Screw you Hannibal Lecter

Background - We had just recently watched the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” and I was having one of my daydream type “mental walk-abouts”. In this break from reality I was agent Starling from the movie and was at the mental asylum interviewing Dr. Hannibal Lecter through the famous glass enclosed cell (I know… I have issues, but I can’t tell you the S.C.O.U.T. if I don’t let you into the strangeness of some of my day to day musings, and don‘t tell me you‘ve never imagined yourself as a character from a movie. Just don‘t, because I don‘t believe you.).

Dr. Lecter had just finished telling me what a cheesy dressing rube I am simply by looking at me and sniffing my cheap drug store bought perfume. He was now trying intimidate me by staring me down with his creepy, black beady eyes. Unlike the real character, Clarice Starling, I let him have it and proceeded to tell him that he doesn’t know me and if that three inch thick glass wasn’t there that I would kick his ass (this scene must have tapped into my less than opulent childhood and I identified with being called out for not having the coolest of cloths!), and finished off by telling him “look buddy, you of all people should know that the cloths don‘t make the man, or the woman, you psycho. At least I don‘t eat people”. It was about now that I realized how far this little mental charade had gone and turned on the radio to try and hitch a ride back to reality, laughing at myself yet once again.

S.C.O.U.T. - The very first thing I hear is the George Michael song “Freedom 90” from the 1980’s (seriously, when is the last time you heard that song randomly on the radio?!), and the lyrics that come booming through my car radio are… “Sometimes the cloths do not make the man… freedom, freedom… ”. I started laughing out loud. Absolutely uncanny timing that those very words would show up within seconds of me thinking them!

Who am I to argue with George Michael.  The cloths don't make the man (or woman) it is!