A Dazzling Moment of Synchronicity

Goodness but I have so much news!  So many things to write blog posts about, that I haven't sat down to write in the last month!  But I know I can't possibly write about them all at once, so I'll start with the one that is the most apropos to this blog: a dazzling moment of synchronicity.

You might be asking, what is synchronicity?  I think the best way to explain it is to give my example:

The sister-in-law of a fellow actor in my current scene study class made the documentary about the International Sweethearts of Rhythm -- the band on which much of my play is based!  I now have her phone number and email and am in the process of setting up a meeting!


There are two things that make this small-world-coincidence feel particularly magical:

One, I have not been going around asking "hey, does anyone know these people?" Mike (the actor in my class) just happened to know I was writing a play because he is acting in some of the other plays being presented by my writing class, so he just happened to ask me what my play was about as we were walking out from class together.  Thus the connection was made.

Two, the night before that class, I was feeling especially stressed, frustrated and unprepared, and bemoaned to my fiance that I really wished I had not taken the class (now that I have decided to focus, for the time-being at least, on writing).  When I told my fiance about this wonderful coincidence, he texted back: "still wish you hadn't taken the class?" (smart-ass).

When I told my collaborator Kat about it, she giddily texted back "SYNCHRONICITY!!!!! AAAAAHHHHH!!!"  When I told my mother, she said "I think that's what god is."  And Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way) would say that they are one and the same.  Ms. Cameron uses the term synchronicity for these happy coincidences, and describes it as "the hand of God, or good, activated by our own hand when we act in behalf of our truest dreams, when we commit to our own soul”.

As an atheist, I reject the god hypothesis as well as the "it was meant to be"/fate/guiding-hand-of-the-universe hypothesis.  Which isn't to say that I don't think we can make our own luck, to some extent.  I do believe that by "putting it out there", by committing oneself to a goal, and setting clear intentions, we set ourselves up to maximize opportunities like this.  We have awareness that goes far far deeper than that which we can consciously recognize, and those "spider senses" can help us make the thousand tiny choices every day that can lead us to things that seem magical because we weren't even conscious we were making those choices.  So, am I saying that some part of me know that I should take that class because there would be someone in it related to Greta Schiller?  Impossible.  But my choices to constantly strive to improve my craft, to put my work out there, and to develop artistic connections as often as possible put me in both those classes at once, allowing me to make a connection that could prove to be very helpful to the development of this piece.  This piece that is so important to me, that is my greatest artistic achievement to date.

Regardless of where this connection will lead -- perhaps just an interesting conversation, perhaps a connection to any possible still-leaving Sweethearts (though there may not be any) or perhaps to something I can't even predict yet -- I cannot wait to meet with her!  For what I do believe in is trying, always trying.  In the words of Goethe:

“Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace, and power in it.”