synchroncity and déjà vu

24 Mar 2017

a few weeks ago on a call with some of the alternative futures collective, abe mentioned an idea that stuck with me. i can’t remember if it was a question or a statement, but the gist of the idea was that maybe everything can be explained with fiction or non-fiction writing. since he said that, i’ve been looking at all sorts of things through that lens: if i’m reading non-fiction i think “i wonder what it would take to make these same points in a fiction form.” as i’ve thought more about it, i do think there are some things that are better for one purpose or another, but the line for that is blurry.

so, i’m gonna do a little test. i have an idea that i’m going to write about first as non-fiction and then as fiction. not sure where it’ll take me, but i love experiments. so here goes.

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a friend of mine (maybe mukaji or farai or gibrán) used to say that déjà vu was a good sign. it meant that you were in the right place. it was a sign that your brain/soul/body/spirit was remembering something that had already happened. this requires belief that time isn’t linear (which it seems like physicists are fine with), but i won’t dig into that now.

déjà vu-like things keep happening in my life where my worlds collapse onto themselves. some examples:

• a few times in my life i’ve found something that i really loved and then realized later that other people i respect have also loved that thing. ex: last year i read letters from a stoic by seneca and fucking loved it. i wrote about it extensively. i couldn’t figure out why i was so into it and actually felt a little weird about it (because why was i getting so much out of someone who lived in a slave society?). and then i find out in this article about a black village being destroyed to create central park that slavery abolitionists were really into a book called morals. guess who the author was? seneca. #vindication.

• when people find out that i worked at the interaction institute, there’s almost always a “oh! i love that place. i know __ from there and they’re great. it’s no surprise that you worked there, too!” moment.

• occasionally when i met someone amazing, i’ll add them on facebook. almost without fail, i’ll find out that they have a bunch of mutual friends in common. and those mutual friends tend to be the ones who think similiarly about social change.

i can’t remember where i first heard about the idea of “the Light,” but i remember reading or talking with someone about how people who are “Lightbearers” being unable to not find each. like, there’s this group of people who just move in the world, all working towards the same vision of a healthy planet and fulfilled people, and when they meet each other they know it. or when they start organizations or initiatives, those things attract other Lightbearers.

all of this sounds real hokey, but i just can’t help noticing the pattern. it feels like this is maybe a religion should be, but never is. or maybe it is and i’ve just been experiencing it from the wrong vantage points. i think it was james martin who said he was in the church for a long time before he realized God was calling him to leave it, lol.

holy shit that was longer than i expected. need to stop rambling now. tomorrow will be a fiction take on this idea.

update

the same day that i wrote this, i had lunch with dave madan and these exact ideas came up! two examples: first, i prompted dave with a storytelling possibility and he said that that was like the fifth time storytelling had come up in the last three days. and then he actually gave all the examples. nuts.

second, sometimes the same name comes up over and over in a short period of time. for me, the name eric gordon has come up like three times in three days. i think that means that i need to meet up or with him (also, this could be an interesting point to add to the narrative version of this topic…)

and, of course, the meta, is that i wrote about this the very morning that dave brought it up at lunch. :O

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20:03	10:41