A geographic synchronicity

Take a look at this map. Notice Australia in red. Way to the left and up into North America, that jut of land at the bottom is Florida. The distance between West Palm Beach, Florida  and Melbourne, Australia is 9,719 miles. This synchronicity makes a good case for  how the phenomenon is quantum in nature. It doesn’t require physical proximity to occur. – Trish

Rob’s story:

When we recently interviewed Rick Bettua for The Mystical Underground, I marveled at one point at how unlikely it was that I (Rob) would ever meet Rick and edit his survival memoir. We’re from different background. He spent 32 years in the U.S. Navy as a diver, then retired to Australia where lives with his wife and two boys. So he was living on the other side of the world, 14 hours ahead of Florida time.

In fact, we most likely would never have met if a six-hundred pound, twelve-foot-long bull shark hadn’t attacked him while freediving on the Great Barrier Reef and shredded one of his legs. He barely survived and in his months-long recovery, he decided to write the story of not only his survival of the shark attack, but of numerous other near-death encounters as a Navy diver. Eventually, that lead him to a British service where he could hire a ghostwriter/editor to help him complete the book. That’s where I met him.

So two people of diverse backgrounds with a writing project in common. But we were to discover an incredible synchronicity. One day, in an exchange of emails I mentioned something about our trips to Sugarloaf Key in the Florida keys. He answered that he was surprised that I even knew about Sugarloaf Key and mentioned that used to have property on the island. I answered and told him that the literary agent we had for years had a house at the end of Flyfish Lane on the water, and he allowed us to stay there whenever it was empty.

Rick wrote right back with a few choice words of astonishment. The property he owned was adjacent to the house where we stayed! What are the chances of that. In fact, Rick had planned to retire there and build a house, but Monroe County decided there would be no more construction on Sugarloaf Key and paid him the same amount that he had paid for the property.

We recall Al, our agent, telling us about the moratorium on construction and that no one could build next to him. But that changed one year when someone with money to spare came along and offered the county $75,000 for their environmental fund as long as the county allowed him to build on that lot. Rick contacted a lawyer when he heard about it, but ultimately he was told there was nothing he could do about it.

So it’s a synchronicity combined with a tale of woe. But only temporarily one because Rick is very happy living in Queensland close to one of the best places for diving in the world. He’s even free diving again less than a year after the shark attack.