Cycles of Convergence

We bump into each other. At least, that's the common phrase. "I bumped into him in the mall," we'll say. Or, "I was in Tofino, on the outer skirts of the West Coast, when I bumped into..." And the person would be named. And a story would follow.

Or what about the mysterious convergence occurring when you want to turn left into a side street, or driveway, or someone's yard? Up and down the road for several blocks or even miles there's been no traffic, or pedestrians! But at that critical point of your wanting to turn, there's interference. A person. A car. A cat. A dog. A cyclist. You have to watch out! You are the one having to wait. "Dang, just where I want to go! Fate put that there just for me!" Just for me!

Cycles of Convergence are akin to fractals. They occur in our lives with the regularity of the sand patterns left on the beach by the tides of time. For some they occur in sets of three, or in years of five, ten, or even twenty. We find coincidences come around and visit us, like lessons that are repeated in the psyches, subtly related, or self-evidently calling out to consciousness. Be careful. Be aware. Be considerate. Be mindful. Be evolutionary. Be progressive! That which one thought or did before was more-shallow, less-caring, more-subjective, less-considerate, more-self-serving. And watch, here comes the lesson again! Or does one-deceive-oneself?

The existential slippery-slope of this self-consciousness perpetuates a sense that I, me, and my existence is predicated on some sort of Master Plan designed all around Me. It implies that even the weather, "of course," is bad or good "because it's my holiday!" It implies that fate is a series of advents awaiting me, like pages in a book, or the paragraphs I am about to read, laid out in a pathway of black and white that leads me toward a conclusion. And therein are the lessons, even though I already know the words and the participles and even perhaps the very grammar by which I've been so led. Karma! After all, it's all meant for me, this life; or is it that I am meant for it? What? Even that last phrase denotes that there is a Master Plan of Convergence that puts me onto this globe at some precise coordinate of time and location in order that I become the next president of... Well, of my class, my company, my country, or even of myself!

Narcissism will have one gazing at the self with constant admiration. Introspection (even in guilt) might become an-absorption with the self too: "The world as I relate to it, as it relates to me." If the mission of one's life (as affirmed by a close friend) is "to become enlightened for the sake of others," then still, one has only oneself, ultimately, as a reference point. Every other idea stems from Someone Else. Existentially, that which one deems factual remains so until an 'other' picks up the jelly fish and shows that there is no harm. We indeed exist for each other. We follow the other on the beach sands into the big dark cave and marvel therein at the gloup through which the waves, in their fullness, crash and spray. We learn what a gloup is! And still, until sufficient time has elapsed in our familiarity with a concept, we fear the imminent tsunami, the eminence of the tide, and are immanently affected by the effect of the delegates at the party of our chosen conventions. Huh? Say what? At each step we learn to differentiate, to apportion, to choose.

In the cycles of convergence, we can concur, time and coincidence appear to collude. To bump. A letter to me born from incidences 20 years ago needles with old grudges. Within the month, from the time-stitches of that same tapestry a long-lost friend coincidentally bumps into me in far-flung Tofino. Interestingly, we might contend, this happenstance "was meant to be." Despite the choices we make that radically alter our seeming destinies, we reflect on our past as though it was our destiny, and more, as though the future is our destiny yet to be. We even quite easily can abrogate our responsibility, giving ourselves over to An Other. And with it, we can determine that the Law of Convergence, in the end, was truly meant 'just' for me! All about, me! ... Really?