I am grateful this evening for synchronicity. They say everything happens for a reason and sometimes through an interesting turn of events the universe gives us little gifts. Today I was on my way home from work cruising along at 20 mph in the normal gridlock, listening to my audiobook and minding my own business. I hadn’t been paying attention to my phone, which had apparently been ringing and I hadn’t heard it. I looked down to see my friend calling me. By the time I’d answered she was gone. When I called her back she laughingly informed me that she had seen me in the midst of all the traffic on the American Legion Memorial Bridge and had honked and waved and I had remained steadfastly looking at the road ahead, neither looking left or right.
“What are you doing out here? Where are you?” I asked, stunned that someone I know and my friend of all people would “happen” to run across me in the midst of the tens of thousands of cars that course along the inner loop of the Beltway at that particular hour. She replied that she was less than a mile ahead of me. “Oh that’s so weird,” I tell her. “Do you want to hang out and have dinner?” It’s rare to connect with my friend during the week–our schedules are too different. She informed me that she had thought she might call me and see if I wanted to have dinner, but when she’d left her office and started down the road realized that she’d forgotten her phone at work. She had to go all the way back to her workplace to get it. If she hadn’t have forgotten her phone and had to go back for it, she would have been on the highway much earlier and our paths would not have crossed. By forgetting her phone, she was delayed enough on the drive home to be cruising home exactly at the same time as I was going over the bridge and stuck in the exact same traffic a half mile ahead of me. I was able to catch up with her and we were able to get off the highway and go have dinner before going home.
Synchronicity: forgetting your phone, which at first glance seems like an unfortunate mistake until you realize that it puts you in exactly the perfect spot to connect with a friend, that out of all the thousands of cars on the beltway, you encounter them. Now if that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is. I have learned to trust such “coincidences” when they occur, and this was an amazing one. In the end we spent a nice couple of hours catching up and chatting about a wide variety of things, including the concept of being in the right place at the right time to truly make a difference.
I am grateful for all those little moments when something shifts, something aligns exactly right. It couldn’t have been orchestrated more perfectly today. And for that, and for having the strength and energy to write and post this evening’s blog after midnight, I am exceedingly grateful.
