I had an interesting experience today. I was out looking for a shop to buy a piece of cloth to use as a backdrop for my recent project I’ve started. Having only lived in my current city for a few months, I wasn’t quite sure where I could find a fabric store, as I only wanted a large piece of fabric. I wasn’t looking for anything special like a bed sheet or anything. Each person I asked at work gave me some different information. One person told me this place, another person told me that place, and I ended up writing down the name of one of the places, with kind of a vague idea of where it was.
Earlier in the day I had listened to a CD I bought several years ago. On the CD this guy was lecturing on the principle of synchronicity. Synchronicity is a concept made popular by the a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Dr. Jung. He believed in some kind of superconscious, which has been described in several different kinds of areas of study, from religion to esoteric spirituality, to financial success. Basically the idea is that when you charge your brain with an intention, and “put it out there,” so to speak, the universe will respond. According to this theory, there is a kind of connection between people and things on some mystical level. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression “what you want wants you,” or have had the experience of thinking of calling your friend, only to hear the phone ring as you turn to call them. I had the experience once where I picked up the phone to call my friend the moment he finished dialing my number. I picked it up before it had a chance to ring. I was expecting a dial tone, and didn’t hear one. He was expecting to hear the ring, and he didn’t hear it. So we both sat there for a minute going “huh?” before we realized what had happened.
I read a book called “Fooled by Randomness,” by Taleb, which basically said that all these synchronistic events are nothing more than random chance, and it’s our mistaken belief systems that delude us into thinking there is some magical connection between everything. While I don’t believe that our lives are nothing than a bunch of random pieces of matter clumped together wandering around, I’m not sure to what extent I believe in some superconscious brain that is connecting.  Whenever I develop a model for the world, I usually try to make it fit both basic scientific models and as esoteric as I can get away with.
So I was walking down this one covered shopping arcade, a big long covered street only open to pedestrians. I had walked down this street probably twenty times since I’ve moved here. The shop that I had written down was supposedly just south of this street, but I had no clue. I started thinking about another store I went to in another city I lived in to buy the same thing. Just as I was thinking about all the different colored rolls of material I was able to choose from, I looked immediately to my right, and there was a kimono store. Not just any kimono store, but the kind that had different rolls of material so you could make your own kimono’s. And cheap. One meter for between 2 and 5 dollars. So I bought a couple meters, it worked out pretty good (if you want you can go watch my youtube videos) so I’m sure I’ll be shopping there in the future. And while I was in there having a look around, a Spanish priest came in and said something to the owner, and then left. I’m not exactly sure how the Spanish priest fits into all this, but it seemed interesting. Perhaps foreshadowing for the future. Stay tuned.