Another good story but that is more off topic was when I was on a vacation with my family and we were panning for gold. The guy was explaining why gold was in the area and what to look for. He then handed us shovels and showed us where everyone else had been digging. I looked around and found a spot in a completely different area that called out to me. Everyone else found small gold flakes. I was the only one to find a nugget.
You're going to have to do a lot more explaining about that "called out to me" phrase, I think. (I'm going to assume you're not talking about a genuine voice.) Was it a choice, like "try this spot because everyone else is going over there", or was it "there seem to be some nugget-sized things in this direction"? Or was it the kind of thing people call coincidence, or "just my dumb luck"?
Your other story reminds me of my father in law. He had a stroke a couple of months before then, and we had made the 200 mile trip down to see him several times. The last time, my husband said as we drove away "I think he's looking better", while my unvoiced thought was "I wonder if we'll ever see him again". He died that night. I don't think there was any "synchronicity" involved; my husband (quite naturally) spoke from hopeful optimism about his father, while I observed my father in law's poor health and appearance more honestly.
You're going to have to do a lot more explaining about that "called out to me" phrase, I think. (I'm going to assume you're not talking about a genuine voice.)
It didn't literally call out to me lmao. I may have a few mental maladies but thankfully schizophrenia is not one. Just a gut feeling for "this looks like a good spot". It was a mixture of paying attention to the guy and dumb luck. Not really a synchronicity but it came to mind and Iike the story.
I've certainly had a few instances of what I consider highly unlikely coincidences. I don't feel that either of these fall strictly under Synchronicity, but I offer up the following two experiences.
Firstly:
Many moons ago, around 2005, my German/British partner (lets call her T.) at the time had already adventured a bit around the globe. Several years after those travels, we had met and were living in the UK, and were organising a trip to New Zealand. This included planning a month stop-over in Cambodia, flying into Bangkok for a couple of nights, then going overland east. She had found a site called Couch-Surfing, and connected with an American living in Bangkok (let's call him K.), who had space to host us. T. had mentioned our plans to visit Angkor Wat, and K. said he had been there, and would be happy to offer advice and local knowledge. They also both commented on each other's profile pictures - hers being sat above Macchu Picchu, and his at Everest Base Camp - saying, hey, I've been there too.
We arrived in BKK, taxied out to his apartment, and were made very welcome by K. and his partner. It was an hour or two later, as we conversed about plans for getting to Siam Riep and getting around the temple complexes, that T. mentioned a recurrent but sporadic issue with tendons in her foot, usually during hiking, that K. and T. suddenly realised they had met previously. This tendon issue had occurred while she hiked up to Everest base camp, and she ended up using a spare boot lace to lift the front of her foot while she was walking, as the tendons weren't functioning. She ended up being taken under the wing of a climbing expedition, helping around their camp site for a few days while the injury settled down and she arranged an air-lift back down-country from Lukla. K. had helped her, while she ambled along looking like a marionnette, and they then shared a cargo flight, bouncing around on sacks and packs. For the rest of the evening, the conversation would just stop as we all went what are the odds?
Looking back on it, of course there was an sub-conscious connection, through the profile pictures, indicating that they had similar interests and experiences. The point that struck me as so unlikely was that they had actually shared a quite unusual event together, and then with no further communications crossed paths again in a completely different contextual setting.
Secondly:
Thirty odd years ago, hitch-hiking was far more prevalent in New Zealand, for locals (broke students) and tourist/back-packers alike, and I often thumbed lifts up and down the North Island. Once I owned a car, I would generally stop for people if my plans/timings allowed me to, and I was travelling far enough to make it worth their while. On a trip north from Wellington back to home in Palmerston North (about 90 minutes drive), I picked up a Spanish couple heading in my direction. When I asked them what they had been doing they replied they had just visited Kapiti Island. At that time, access was very heavily restricted, limited mostly to ecological research and Department of Conservation personnel, and not open to casual/private boat trips, (due to the slight risk of re-introduction of introduced species/predators: rats, cats, mustelids and possums are the bane of NZ flora and fauna.) I expressed my surprise, that two back-packers had managed to wangle access, when most locals had NO chance of doing so. They said a friend had arranged it, due to researching there, and were just as surprised when I asked them if they were visiting Rosie! My best mate at the time was completing a doctorate in Ecology, and I knew most of the other post-grads in the small department, along with their chosen research/location of study. It helped knowing that Rosie was Spanish as well...
External Quote:
island nature reserve located 5.6 km (3 mi) off the west coast of the lower North Island of New Zealand and within the Kāpiti Coast District. Parts of the island were previously farmed, but it is now a predator-free sanctuary for endemic birds, including many endangered birds.
So perhaps not synchronicity, per se, but I find it interesting with the both cases, it was seemed like quite unique events and friendships that would be hard to engineer. How many folk could pick up foreign hitch-hikers, and then have a connection in common, half a world away from home?
The number of people who participate in high-adventure excursions to exotic places is limited, compared with the population as a whole. The number of people going to what you describe as a limited-access island because of a particular interest is even smaller. Those factors, of course, make coincidences more likely.
I once met a coworker in LaGuardia, who was arriving as I was departing, going back to Ohio. We said hello and kept walking. We both were there because of company business, and thought nothing of the matter.
They're interesting coincidences but there's a possible, if unlikely, cause - as Ann mentions above, the limited population who undertake such adventures.
Synchronicity is defined by its "acausality" — there being no logical causal connection between your inner experience (or thought) in one particular moment and some external event coinciding with it. This is the quality that makes them seem so confounding and distinctive.
I do like coincidences though: A few years after graduating I moved to NYC and remember catching a glimpse of someone across a crowded subway platform who I mistook for someone I studied with in London. It wasn't her. A few months later I was getting off the subway and literally bumped into the actual person I studied with who had been on the same train carriage. She had just moved to NYC.
