The weirdness of synchro stories

On the last Saturday of each month, the Coincidence Cafe meets through Zoom for about an hour and a half. We trade synchro stories. We break into small groups and get to know each other.

Tomorrow’s topic is how to tell a synchronicity story. The answer seems obvious. All stories begin with meeting the hero or heroine. Who is this person? Who are these people? What did the synchronicity involve and where did it happen? Who or what was involved? What was the message?

So here’s an example.

In June 2021, before the huge spike in Covid cases in Florida, we met some dog park friends at Darbster’s, a vegan restaurant in West Palm Beach. It’s named after the owner’s dog, now deceased, so pooches are welcome. We met up with Lloyd, Paula, and her friends, Meryl and Jeff. We got seats outside, on the porch, where there was a nice cross-breeze and plenty of shade.

Our server was a masked young woman, with beautiful dark eyes. She spoke with a slight accent and I pegged her for South American. I  finally asked her, in Spanish, where she came from.

“Venezuela,” she replied.

“Me too!” I exclaimed.

She looked shocked. “Where in Venezuela?”

“Caracas and Maracaibo.”

“Me, too!”

We chatted about dictators Maduro, Chavez, and even farther back, to Perez Jimenez, whose regime I lived under. “At least he built things,” she said,

And that much was true. Jimenez was responsible for building the autopista, the highway from Caracas to the coast. He also embezzled $13 million from the Venezuelan treasury when he fled the country and lived out the rest of his life on Miami Beach.

I left Venezuela was I was nearly 17.

She left when she was 17 and was now 27.

Her family was still there. Mine isn’t. She wanted to surprise her mom on mother’s day, but when she checked flights, she discovered a ticket cost $2500 and the trip took 23 hours. Apparently, any American airline that flies to Venezuela these days is one that goes through Mexico and a bunch of other spots before hitting Maiquetia, the Venezuelan airport.

Before we left the restaurant, I asked the young woman her name. “Me llamo Patricia.”

Honestly, I nearly swallowed my tongue. I go by Trish but Patricia is my birth name.

“Sincronicidad,” I said to her before we left. Synchronicity.

And she nodded and put her arms around me and we hugged.

We traded cell numbers.

So there you have it, the story of a synchronicity that involved 2 people with the same first name, from the same city and country, who left the country at the same age – although decades apart. The camaraderie, the connectedness, is something you feel immediately. Was I meeting a younger version of myself? Was I her future self? What did this synchronicity mean?

The meaning of any synchronicity is also a story that unfolds. And in this story, I feel we both benefited by recognizing the eerie parallels in our lives that hints at a greater, underlying order of things.