Remember that movie from the early 2000s, ‘I Heart Huckabees’? The main character, played by Jason Schwartzman, is curious about the constant coincidences in his life, so he hires a unorthodox duo of detectives help him figure out what they could mean.

At the time, I found the premise pretentious and confusing, but right about now, I totally get it. For my own life has begun to resemble a Wes Anderson movie, albeit without the helpful existential investigators and dreamy pastel hues. So in the spirit of attempting to make sense of them myself, here are some examples of the synchcronicities Ive experienced lately.

NUMBERS

At work, I’m a busy person. I’m rarely idle and I don’t clock-watch, but still, almost every single day, I find myself looking at time at 11.11, 1.11 and 3.33. Usually, those times are the ONLY three times I’ve checked my watch. In fact it’s so common that if I happen to miss one, like the other day when I checked my phone at precisely 11.12, it feels like something is off.

RUMI POEM

A few months back, I was listening to a psychology podcast on my 45min commute to work, as I am apt to do. The topic was mindfulness, a concept I’m reasonably familiar with, and the segment closed with the guest speaker providing a quote by the poet Rumi, who’s work I am also reasonably familiar with. This, however, was a poem I had never heard, called ‘The Guest House’. For those unacquainted with this particular piece, here it is:

It is a lovely poem and I enjoyed hearing it, although to be honest I didn’t give it much more thought once my drive was over.

One of my daily work duties is selecting the store’s music playlist, and that day I had randomly put the latest Coldplay album into the rotation. Now it is important to note that I have never heard this album, nor had much inclination to as I’m not a huge fan of the band (although I did admittedly enjoy a few of their earlier songs). I don’t know what inspired me to choose it that day, but I did, and around 1pm it started playing in the store. A few songs in, while performing duties out on the floor, I was stopped in my tracks. The music had ceased for a spoken word interlude, which in itself is not remarkable, but the words themselves gave me goosebumps. “This being human is a guest house,” a booming, authoritive voice declared. “Each day a new arrival.” Its recited in its entirety, and I later found out that Chris Martin discovered the poem while going through his divorce and loved it so much he decided to feature it on his album.

ENTROPY IS UNAVOIDABLE

Earlier this week, after finishing work for the day, I was sitting on the couch scrolling through Facebook. I came across this meme:

Like most memes, it provided a feeble chuckle and I swiftly moved on. The only line that stood out was ‘entropy is unavoidable’ as I didn’t really know what that meant but didn’t care enough to look into it further.

About an hour later my boyfriend and I settled in to watch an episode of ‘Animals’, an absurd but hilarious cartoon on the comedy channel we’d just gotten into. In this particular episode, the band 311 guest star, and in one scene the main character is singing one of their songs lyrics back to them: “You can’t stop entropy so why even try, observe the conscious flow and don’t mystify.” So the message I’m getting is that you entropy is unavoidable and you can’t stop entropy. Now I just need to figure out what ‘entropy’ means.

SPECK OF DUST

Two nights ago, my boyfriend wanted to watch the aforementioned Sarah Silverman stand-up on Netflix. One of the bits in her routine included a monologue on the insignificance of individual human life in the grand scheme of the universe, likening us to a mere ‘speck of dust’.

After the special was over, we retired to bed with an old episode of ‘The Office’. Just as I was drifting off, I heard Michael Scott’s character justifying calling a staff meeting to talk about the planets. “Because it’s a big universe,” he says to Jim. “And we’re all just tiny little specks of dust.”

So there we have it- numbers, a 16th century poem, an unusual phrase and a common quote. Some patterns I can see from listing these are that every time, the synchronicity has occurred within the same day, sometimes within hours. It’s always delivered via seperate and unrelated mediums, i.e.: educational podcast and music cd, Facebook and cartoon, stand up comedy and scripted television. Beyond that, I’m not sure. I’ll guess I’ll just continue to list them as they occur and see if more patterns emerge.

Is my subconscious trying to tell me something? Is my higher self attempting to communicate through various mediums? Am I reading too much into it? Are they all just stupid coincidences and I maybe smoke too much weed? Who knows. I wish I had Jason Schwartzman’s number.