Most of us have heard the phrase 6 degrees of separation. But just to be sure I understood it, I looked it up on wikipedia. “6 degrees of separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to: if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth. It was popularized by a play written by John Guare.”
It fits this next story from Carol Bowman, author and past-life researcher. We previously posted another one of her synchronicities.
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In September of 2007 a friend of mine alerted me to an essay in The New York Times written by Sandy Ungar, a former NPR host and the current president of Goucher College. The essay was about Sandy’s accomplished brother who died before Sandy was born. He talked about living in the shadow of his brother, and concluded his essay with a comment about believing that somehow they might share the same soul.
Having written a book about reincarnation in the same family, I wondered if indeed Sandy Ungar was the reincarnation of the brother who died before his birth. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to present that possibility to the author of the essay.
I wrote a cover letter explaining my twenty years of research of children’s past life memories, included a copy of my book, and mentioned that I was occasionally in the Baltimore area because my brother, a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins, lived in the area. I sent off the package and never heard from Sandy Ungar. I wasn’t too surprised, and forgot about it.
This evening I was talking to my brother, Paul, who is a medical researcher and an ophthalmologist at Hopkins. He has been suffering with the flu for the past week. He said the most disappointing part of being sick was that he missed an opportunity to have dinner at Sandy Ungar’s house with Karl Rove! I interrupted him, “You know Sandy Ungar?” (I didn’t even mention my shock that my liberal Democrat brother would have an opportunity to have dinner with Karl Rove.) He told me that he is Sandy’s wife’s doctor. I then told him how I had tried to contact Sandy a couple of years ago because of the essay he wrote. Paul said, “You should have told him you were my sister!” Of course, I didn’t know there was a direct connection two years ago when I wrote the letter and I used my married name, so Sandy couldn’t have known Paul is my brother.
Great stories, Erika. Maybe it has less to do with a small town than the ways in which people are connected. I'm beginning to think these kinds of synchronicities could be a chapter of their own.
This kind of thing happens to me often. There is one block in New Haven where my daughter's (now former) best friend lives across the street from a couple whose son and mine found each other at a music and art camp. I was talking to the mother about planning a play date for them and when she gave me her business card, I realized that she and her husband had had dinner with us more than 20 years ago when her husband and mine were med students together at NYU.
And next to them lives Jennifer Basile, whose book, The Black Girl Next Door, I had just read and was telling a friend about. This friend lives around the corner from this block and told me, oh yes, Jennifer, I know her and helped train her while she was writing that book.
I could go on.
I guess one thing is that New Haven is a small town.
Sorry, I just HAD to say it! Plus, it's a fun game! LOL
Good one, Whip!
I can't believe nobody has mentioned six degrees of Kevin Bacon! LOL 🙂
That's a fantastic story, musing! Maybe C has created a new category for synchronicities & now there are at least 2 stories. So there must be more out there!
I went over to read "C"s "Degrees of Sync and I think this true story from my life qualifies for degrees of sync (3rd degree person wraps around to being 1st degree to me…I think.) Herewith:
My family moved to a little Texas town for my 4th grade school year. I made a best friend with Jeana because we were 'the smartest girls in class.' In May my dad was transferred to Rochester, NY and I was saddened to move away from my friend. We corresponded for a couple of years desultorily as kids do and then the letters ceased. My family moved back to Texas for my high school years and I decided to commute to Univ of Houston to save money. In fall of my sophomore year I fell in love with a boy who lived on campus in one of the dorms. His good friend who lived across the hall was dating a girl from that small Texas town; they had been dating since high school. She was very smart and was attending Rice Univ on a National Merit Scholarship. I mentioned my long ago best friend with the unusual spelled name. You guessed it; it was she, my best friend from 10 years before was his sweetheart. We had a wonderful reunion and were roommates the following summer.
Musing – as soon as I read what you'd written, I realized I'd never seen that connection, either. I think the movie Grand Canyon is also built on synchronicity. It's on my list of see agains!
"Of all the gin joints in all the towns of all the world…." (Casablanca). For some reason I just became aware that synchronicity is the whole premise or raison d'etre for the movie!
@ Trish and Rob MacGregor – I am from Baltimore, nice!
Here is a post about a new phrase I coined ""Degrees of Syncs". It actually lead to another coined term of mine "Spirit syncs", I also have a post about that.
P.S. Your story kinda reminds me of that.
MY POST ON – "Degrees of Syncs"
https://synchronize23.blogspot.com/2009/07/degrees-of-syncs.html
I've always been intrigued by the 6 degree thing, too. It's that web of life where we're all connected!
Yep, you know it's six degrees of separation when you hear someone say, "what a small world."
oops – forgot i'd meant to say that this post reminds me of the trip i took to california last year when my plane was delayed for hours and we were put on another plane with a new crew – the new crew had been called in unexpectedly when our flight was cancelled – and lo and behold, both the flight attendants and i, as it turned out, were all from louisiana – and more – chatted all the way back to the east coast about things places and people we had in common – anyway – great post above!!!
very very neat post!!! i've always been so intrigued with the 6 degrees concept – the "incredible but true" – great story!