Welcome to Livlife. Where I am living my life out loud, for all to read.

Okay, this one goes out to my friend Kelly who I had lunch with today. Kelly got to listen to the concept of this post in person, so I am dedicating it to her for her patience. (Plus she loves to see her name in lights!).

 

Right after Kelly gave birth to her son, Christian, I put up a post about a Baader-Meinhof that occurred because of that event. Well, that post led me through a series of events that I described in a different post where I described an evening of Baader-Meinhofs. I thought about how fascinating it is that these things can happen to us all of the time. And, while many find it strange that I keep mentioning the BM phenomenon, once I explain it, the whole world says, "oh yeah, that happens to me all the time." Which is pretty interesting in and of itself.

 

Then, a couple of weeks ago, this happened: my family was in town visiting and my cousin Sara asked me a bizarre question. The last time she had visited was two years earlier and her husband was here as well. While they were here that time, we were playing a game and it led to my dad singing a song. Well, my dad is not a singer by nature. He just doesn't do it. But at that time, he was trying to convince Mike, Sara's husband, of the virtue of a specific song.

 

This time around, Sara wanted to know what the name of the song was that my dad was singing. Mind you, this was two years ago, but after some serious brain crunching, we managed to recall. The song is "Beep Beep (Little Nash Rambler)" by The Playmates (circa 1958). As it turns out, Mike was never able to get that song out of his head (watch for my upcoming post about Earworms...) and sings all the time as he is doing things around the house. So Sara wants to know what the name of the song is, we come up with it, and then....BAM!....it comes on the radio. Seriously, this is hardly a well-played song and to hear it seconds later was a coincidence of cosmic proportions. Immediately, I say, Baader-Meinhof.

 

Oh Boy! My dad immediately disagreed with me. He said that it can't be a BM unless the person had no prior knowledge of the information involved. Like reading a word you don't know and then hearing someone say it. This, he said, is just mere coincidence.

 

Mere coincidence? That didn't make me happy at all. It was just too weird. I knew that there had to be more going on here than coincidence. Obviously, I checked it out. The first thing I did was to make sure my dad was right. Yep, he is. It can't be a BM unless you had no prior knowledge of the information that you keep stumbling over. So then, what is it?

 

Synchronicity.

 

You heard me. Synchronicity (coincidentally--or not--also a title of an album by beloved 80's band The Police) is the concept of a "highly meaningful coincidence". It was first given voice by psychologist Carl Jung sometime in the 1920's.

 

Ok, fine. So now I know. I read all this information last week, and fully intended to blog about it, just to keep you all updated and to straighten out any misconceptions I may have inadvertantly caused. Then, on Sunday night, I was watching my new favorite show, "In Plain Sight." During the episode, the main character was expounding on the concept of a huge coincidence that had happened in the plot and she mentions Jung's theory of synchronicity.

 

I was lazily lounging on the couch enjoying the show and then I bolted upright, staring at the screen. Are you kidding me?

 

And there it was, my very own Baader-Meinhof (for real this time!). How bizarre is that?