16. Synchronicity
Coincidence was something my family always enjoyed and shared with one another but no one attached any meaning to it. Coincidence was just “one-of-those-things,” a usually amusing little anecdote that popped in and out of “real” life and then was forgotten. The subject, therefore wasn't profound or even interesting enough to be considered—until years later when I began to experience a string of coincidences that had…no meaning whatsoever.
The first peculiar coincidence that I can recall began on the day I found a poor dead squirrel in the back yard, which I assumed had fallen off the roof of our two-story duplex. The next day I learned that Ruth R., the lady who lived upstairs had died suddenly. Everyone else was shocked because Ruth had only been in her thirties. I was shocked because I had never seen a dead squirrel before and had no experience with the death of any known human being. Two living beings that had suddenly ceased to Be. The juxtaposition of the two events struck me as odd though I knew they were not really connected. Still, I thought the timing of the two events was curious and interesting.
Some time later, I watched transfixed in horror as a squirrel ran into the path of a car, and was killed outside my home. Instantly I recalled Ruth R’s death and the squirrel that had fallen from the roof. I remember having the thought that I was engaging in “silly nonsense” by even considering a connection between the squirrel and human deaths.
Later that day, Ruth's elderly father Mr. H. died. Two dead squirrels, two deaths in the upstairs duplex: I did not think there was any real connection but for a little while, I toyed with the notion that I had accidentally tripped over some sort of pre-death announcement. Could it be that nature provided different kinds of announcements for everyone? I wondered. But when I asked my mother about it, she reassured me that it was just a not-very-nice coincidence; and that was good enough for me.
Experiences such as these, made me aware that our signposts in life are not only the tangible, central events that happen in chronological order; but the peripheral details, and the way we connect everything.
Repeating Numbers?
As far as I was concerned, life was filled with unlimited coincidences, and because each was unique, its occurrence slid beneath my notice until one day when I observed in passing, that each time I had looked at the clock, it had been something thirty-three:
The next day it happened again.
If I had had a career crammed with hourly or half-hourly appointments, or had watched television during the day—I would have presumed that my strange awareness had to do with checking the time a few (three) minutes after the half-hour. If there had been clocks all over the house, the odds might have been in favour of such an odd observation. But aside from the almost-indecipherable analog clock on the stove, there was only one digital clock in the house back then, upstairs in the bedroom, where after tidying in the morning, I had little reason to go during the day.
I rarely kept track of the time back then—seldom looked at a clock and never wore a watch. I was fortunate to be a stay-at-home mother, and time there was marked mainly by the sounds of the street, the quality of the light, the comings and goings of my family, and other natural rhythms of life. And I liked it that way.
Neither was I superstitious. I had no lucky number, no fear of breaking mirrors, or of black cats crossing my path. Thirteen didn't faze me, and not walking under ladders, just made good, common sense. I was proud of my rational mind and pragmatic, non-superstitious attitude. I was, I thought, strong-minded and logical. I had no intention of wasting any time trying to figure it out or hoping to assign meaning to what was—after all—merely a number and a meaningless coincidence.
The machinations of the mind had always fascinated me and I decided that this numeric manifestation had to be simply a case of selective observation. But that night I woke up—contrary to my usual habit of sleeping straight through until morning—and to my amazement I saw that it was
Over the next few weeks, I slept soundly through the night, and the days passed without a single recurrence of the strange little coincidence. Not once did I see thirty-three. Then one night I awoke, and once again found it to be twenty-seven minutes before the hour—something-33. “There I go again”, I chuckled but didn’t think twice about it, for I had decided that this was a purely random little event, which had somehow attached itself to my own observation. The next day however, there were clusters of “33s” everywhere I turned. I let a car into my lane and felt a frisson of irony when I noticed that it had “333” on its license plate. Then I tore off a paper queue stub in the bakery and saw that it was “33”. A few minutes later, I placed some groceries on the checkout conveyor belt, still feeling the vestiges of the silent mental giggle I’d had upon seeing the bakery stub.
“Do we enter into a symbiotic relationship with what we choose to notice?” I mused. Then the cashier pushed the tally button and announced the amount of the bill: thirty-three dollars—even. No cents.
Right. No sense! The cashier smiled. I did too, feeling that any second, words might tumble from my lips, and I might tell this friendly stranger about the little flurry of coincidences that had just occurred. But of course, I only said, “thank you” when she handed me two one-dollar bills, change from $35.
“Well, naturally,” I thought, or tried to think. Why would it not be $33.00? I walked out to the car and immediately saw that the pickup truck that had parked in front of me did not have “33” in its plate number. I got into the car, and started it. “Thirty-three years old today,” said the radio announcer as the engine came to life.
“What on Earth kind of coincidences are these,” I wondered. What were the odds?
That night I woke up again in the middle of darkness, but this time I had the groggy idea to out-wait it. If I didn't turn over just yet, I rationalized sleepily, I wouldn't know if it were anything-33. I would not be able to tell how long I had waited, so even if it were
After that, I accepted the fact that for some unknown reason I was tuned-in to that particular number. If these perfectly timed awakenings were messages from the cosmos, then it seemed the cosmos must have figured its point had been made. It did not continue to intrude on my sleep. If there was any “point”, I had no idea what it might be, and I was not about to give it any serious consideration for if there was any meaning to be found at all, I was doubtful that I would find it in my own interpretations. It was one thing to enquire about the nature of synchronicity, quite another to navel-gaze about my own. I permitted myself only brief amusement by their frequently interesting occurrences, but in a sense, I became more discriminating about coincidence. To my way of thinking, this was so easily explainable as selective observation, that it no longer turned my head, and became nothing more than an instantly passing chance occurrence. But that is not to say I was able to ignore it completely. Thirty-threes kept cropping up. When (the only time) a dear friend (a fellow young mother and fellow kitchen table philosopher) and I rented space at a local fleamarket, as she registered, I walked on to pick up our table number from a pile of cardboard squares laying face down. It was “33”. I checked the next one but it was way out of sequence—not that numerical order would have made the coincidence less of one. The fact that we arrived, in the middle of a flow of people, at the precise moment that happened to leave “33” at the top of the deck when I got to the table, was coincidence enough.
A short while later, we dropped by my new apartment to pick up the keys. As the superintendent handed me the underground parking tag, my friend and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance. Out of all the spots in the garage, I just happened to be getting spot 33. Noticing our surprise, the superintendent looked at us questioningly, so I told her briefly that that particular number seemed to pop up a lot. Since I am not superstitious and (at least at that time) was convinced that anyone who even sounded mystical was either nuts or a charlatan, I certainly didn't want to come across as either, and to my grateful surprise, she didn't take it that way. Instead, she told me not to dismiss it or be afraid of it—that it must be something special. By then, I certainly saw it as odd or curious, if not special—and I was delighted that she had echoed that sentiment.
Thirty-three continued to mystify and amuse me. On the day of orientation at my first job since the birth of my daughter Ell., I sat at a U-shaped table with twenty-five or more other new part-time Christmas hires, and was handed my employee number. Again, I was amazed to find that mine was 34933. Was there a kind of poetry in numbers? I wondered. Is that how career mathematicians viewed numbers and equations?
Though writing about it now, I spent very little time considering it back then. I was living my life and my thoughts were (usually) on whatever I was doing. When I had time to ponder, I sought answers to more pressing questions, but the vague puzzle remained. Why was I noticing this particular number? Why not 7, or 11, or 13, or 44? Did it have something to do with Ell.? She was born at
I never thought to look specifically for what had been bright and enlightening.
Many others have also noticed this odd ‘33’ phenomenon, including Major League baseball pitcher David WellsBio XVII
posted by Winter Child @ 4:51 a.m.
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