Something happened to me this past week that threw me for a loop. I spiraled into a lot of fear and insecurity, projecting the worst possible outcome. Despite having a blog called “Another World is Probable,” for my own life, my first impulse is doom and gloom. When I’m in this emotional place, I lose all rational faculties and feel utterly alone, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I had an experience on Saturday that pulled me out of that hole and helped me change my perspective. My friend Rachel Kaplan launched her podcast, “The Healing Feeling Sh*t Show.” I highly recommend checking it out, by the way. It’s all about emotional potty training for adults. I attended the launch party by myself, anticipating I’d see familiar faces in the crowd, but no one I’d spent much time with. While hobnobbing, I spotted not one, but three people I hadn’t seen in years. It felt like a gift, a synchronistic delight, to anticipate aloneness but instead have the opposite experience.
I realize some of you will scratch your heads because after all, don’t Rachel and I have friends in common and therefore wouldn’t it make sense I would see them at her launch party? Yes, yes it would. But wait! There’s more. I ordered a Lyft home and the driver was also a friend of mine! That’s literally never happened to me before.
I bring this up because all of these synchronicities reminded me life is magical, that there is an intelligence at play in the universe. It reminded me I may think I’m alone and under-resourced, but in actuality I have a wealth of care and support at my fingertips. There is an inherent love for me that I cannot fathom or anticipate.
Despite the numerous magical experiences in my life, I usually think they’re a fluke. I think the synchronicity is a one-off, something never to be repeated. My experience from Saturday night illustrated to me how wrong that is. Magic, synchronicity, and care is more the norm than it is the exception. I regularly have these experiences. Not so regular I can predict their occurrence, but regular nonetheless.
I’m not alone in this. I know many people experience synchronicity and what could be called a coincidence. For me, today, I’m taking it as evidence of a loving higher power. An entity that acts benevolently, that orchestrates things in such a way that I’m taken care of, and also shows me from time to time that I’m not alone, that there are greater forces at work in the world that I’m often unaware of.
My spiritual tradition corroborates this. Over and over again my spiritual teacher says the divine loves us more than we can imagine. Loves us so purely, completely, and unconditionally our human brains are unable to comprehend the depth and breadth of love. But it’s up to us to recognize it.
I dream of a world where we realize we are not alone. A world where we recognize there is a greater, benevolent force at play in our lives. A world where we remember we are loved deeply and completely and that means we’ll experience magic from time to time.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.