Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

Synchronicities

Illustrated by Jenny Huang

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to watching Maleficent. Good movie, though I spent the majority of it enraptured by Angelina Jolie’s cheekbones. Later that night, on my Instagram feed, lo and behold, was a Maleficent makeup tutorial. Obviously, Instagram has a sort of algorithm for that kind of thing… except, I’d watched this on my TV. Entirely disconnected from my social media.

The other day, in my morning class, we watched a movie starring Jeremy Renner (and Anthony Mackie, which I took specific note of because I’m one of those psychotic Marvel fans) as a soldier at war. That same day in my afternoon class, we watched Arrival. I squinted when I saw him come up on screen. No way that’s Jeremy Renner, no way. I turned to my friend—who happens to be in both of these classes—to find him nodding confirmation as my eyebrows shot up in disbelief. Hawkeye, my friend, you look great in uniform.

My mom is one of those people who thinks of someone she hasn’t spoken to in a while, and suddenly they’ll call. If she dreams of someone dying, someone in the family is going to have a baby. If her mom visits her in a dream, it’s likely someone has passed away. I have an odd sense of trust in this. Maybe it’s because she’s my mother and, you know, we tend to have an odd sense of trust in our moms, but maybe it’s also because I’ve experienced those weird sorts of anomalies myself. I’ll think of someone I haven’t thought about in years and suddenly they spring up in conversation, or I see their name plastered somewhere, or—the really spooky one—I actually run into them. It’s almost like déjà vu, except not quite as jarring. The car radio will play Ariana Grande as we pass by a building which at that exact moment reads GRANDE in bold letters on the front. My mom and an old friend of mine get asked to partake in jury duty the same day. I’m mid-conversation, mentioning my dad and he sends me a text.

I don’t know what any of these coincidences mean. I watch YouTube videos where I am told it is my spirit guides sending me messages—ones that I can never decode, no matter how many numerology videos I watch. I mention these phenomena to friends and family who dismiss them as patterns in the universe, or who don’t even acknowledge them to begin with. Either way, I am fascinated. For all the seemingly inexplicable things in the world, there is a theory, which offers a perspective through which to view such things. To me, I hope that synchronicities mean that I am on the right path. To my mother, there is a higher power at play. To my father, that’s all they are: coincidences.