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, June 26, 2011

What's in a name?

Background – I had been journaling and collecting S.C.O.U.T.’s (strange cases of uncanny timing) for over nine months when I decided I needed a few synonyms for the word “coincidence”.  I was using the word so much that at times my writing was sounding redundant and choppy.  I looked up “coincidence” on Thesaurus.com and read the word bank for synonyms.  One of the synonyms was “circumstance”, and when you scrolled down farther, the word “circumstance” had its own synonym suggestions.  This is the entry I saw:
Main Entry:  circumstance 
Part of Speech:  noun 
Definition:  situation, condition 
Synonyms:  * Moira, accident, action, adjunct, affair, article, case, cause, * coincidence, concern, contingency, crisis, destiny, detail, doom, element, episode, event, exigency, fact, factor, fate, feature, fortuity, go, happening, happenstance, incident, intervention, item, juncture, kismet…etc., etc.
*The first synonym is “Moira” and the ninth synonym is “coincidence”.
S.C.O.U.T.  -  My middle name is Moira.  It didn’t escape me that the words “destiny”, “fate” and “kismet” (the word of Turkish origin for fate or destiny) were also in this word bank.  I’m not exaggerating when I say you could have blown me over with a feather.  Truth be told, this freaked me out a little.  I have the distinct feeling that I’m being walked down a garden path and have no choice but to follow.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

July 19, 2010 - Mixed signals

Background - I had to avoid Rte. 7 because the traffic was at a complete stand-still.  I decided to take a detour that would take me far off my intended path and quickly got annoyed at myself at the length I would have now have to travel.  Perhaps it would have just been better to just sit in the traffic for a few minutes.  I had already started down the path of this detour and decided to soothe my irritated nerves by telling myself that I had subconsciously chosen this way in order to avoid a car accident.  Had I gone the other way perhaps that would have been the result. 
S.C.O.U.T. – I had barely finished with this little mind trick to justify my actions, when a car pulled erratically out into the intersection I was about to pass through and came to a stop right in front of me.  I could see the driver and quickly realized he wasn’t paying any attention to the road, he was talking with the passenger sitting next to him.  I instinctively slammed on the brakes and laid about five feet of tire rubber before coming to a stop, only inches from the side of this man’s car.   It was truly the closest I have come to having a serious car accident in all my thirty years of driving.
This incident left me wondering how I could have been thinking about avoiding a serious car accident and then seconds later nearly having my very first one in all my years of driving.  Did I attract the near car accident by just thinking about “car accident”, or did I perhaps avoid it because I was focused on “avoiding a car accident”?  Or as usual, there’s always the possibility that this was just a cosmic coincidence and has no meaning whatsoever.  
My goofy dog Scout is still a bit shaken by this near miss and therefore tells me to just keep my eyes on the road, and to STOP thinking about car accidents altogether.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Reader contribution - Brother, can you spare a dime?

Background – My son Jake has been more than a little skeptical about this phenomenon and refused to let me in on any of the strange coincidences happening to him that may be called a S.C.O.U.T…… until today!

Jake walked into one of his classes and another student was pointing to a dime on the floor.  There was a quick exchange about who would snatch up the little gift.  Jake took one look at the dime and remarked “It’s just a dime.  A dime won’t buy you anything in this world.  I don’t want it, you can have it”.  The girls sitting behind him happily accepted the gift and snickered at Jake “Now I’m a dime richer than you Jake!”  It was a brief, light hearted exchange that Jake didn’t think another thing about until that afternoon.
S.C.O.U.T.   -  In P.E. that afternoon another friend of Jake’s was drinking a Sobe flavored water and remarked to Jake how delicious it was and how Jake HAD to try one.  Jake laughed, agreed and then reminded the kid that he owed him a few dollars and it was time to pay up so he could go get that Sobe water!  The kid dug in his pocket and dropped a dollar bill and all the change he had into Jake’s hand as payment. 
Jake arrived at the soda machine, checked the price of the Sobe water and then looked into his hand to see how much money his friend had given him.  Sitting under the $1 bill, Jake had a dime and a nickel.  The price of the Sobe water was $1.25.  Jake felt the tingle creep down his spine as he was now finding out just how valuable a dime can be.  He counted over 25 students before he could find one that would lend him a dime so he could get his Sobe water; grinning and shaking his head all the while about the undeniable S.C.O.U.T. that he would now finally have to share with his mother!!
My goofy dog Scout loves his Jake and is growling at me to leave him alone.  Sorry buddy, no can do!!!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Reader contribution - The grim reaper gives Sujatha a nod

Background - Sujatha had just read my blog entry “The wonderful Mr. Drozd” and found herself thinking about funeral S.C.O.U.T.s and how truly strange they can be.  She headed off to coffee with an old friend as she rolled these thoughts around in her head.  At coffee, Sujatha’s friend brings up a man that they both know.  He is a close friend of hers and a longtime acquaintance of Sujatha’s.  They proceed to have a short conversation about this man and about a funny comment he made that had tickled her friend pink!  It was a normal run of the mill conversation and Sujatha didn’t think much about it… until the next morning.

S.C.O.U.T.  – The next morning Sujatha receives an unexpected text from her coffee companion.  It was a stunned announcement that the man they had been so casually talking about only yesterday (the first time they had spoken of him in a great while) had passed away last night.  Sujatha immediately connected her thoughts from the previous day about the strange nature of funeral S.C.O.U.T.s to the fact that she experienced one that very same day… a coincidence inside a coincidence so to speak!  Sujatha and I have since decided that this was no coincidence, and in that case, the implications are staggering.
My goofy dog Scout grudgingly admits that funeral S.C.O.U.T.s are the strangest.  He is also fully aware of the implications and says that someday he’ll let me in on the cosmic truth about death, but right now he needs to take his nap.  Sigh.