Do you see…signs from the Universe…?
Do you see…signs from the Universe…?
I believe that I do. How about you? Can I ever be sure? Can you? Perhaps not. After all, that’s why it’s called faith, right? Faith is one of those qualities that can’t be measured, only felt. And a closely associated concept is narrative, our distinctly human sense of story and the significance that comes with that. We can’t ever scientifically verify this kind of thing, much for the same reason that we can’t ever really know the essence of an insect from studying its carcass pinned in a museum case, no matter how carefully and thoroughly observant we are. There’s something necessarily vital about existence that flows through our subjective personal narratives, and sometimes seems to speak to our very souls, reassuring us that we are on the right path. Ultimately there are far too many factors for us to control, and so the universe itself, or “God”, or “Source”, must play a significant part in our success. And we have a persistent and abiding sense that we must co-creators in a very real way. The solution to human existence is authentic co-creation, and narrative significance is the result.
Another way that I say it: Faithful surrender + narrative significance = Jungian synchronicity
The psychologist Carl Jung coined the term “synchronicity”, which fits given his strongly narrative and archetypal understanding of the human psyche. Synchronicities, sometimes called “Kismet moments”, are those little nudges from the universe that seem far too unlikely to be mere coincidence. They tend to feel highly meaningful, significant, surreal, liminal, and a dumbfounding with wonder. No matter how many of them one has, they ALWAYS feel that way, by definition. It’s just not the kind of thing you ever get used to, and they deliver a truly miraculous and highly personalized sense of wonder each and every time. I’ve had clients and prospects asking about these lately.
Do I see them? Do I believe in them? Do I explain them away? Do I trust them?
I’ll answer with a story of my own. This is a story from this past weekend (and earlier). The “divine timing” is me writing this on Monday and Tuesday. It couldn’t have worked out any other way. The segments are numbered for ease of comprehension.
1. In 2012 I had a fun computer program called Handbrake, a DVD ripping software. In my free moments a decade ago I assiduously transferred many of my favorite movies onto the hard drive of a computer. And I have since been moving them from hard drive to hard drive over the years as we upgrade our computers.
2. Every now and then I’ll get the urge to put a few of these movies onto my phone and rewatch them. The last week or so has been one such time. I don’t know why. There’s plenty to watch on streaming services. These ripped DVD films somehow feel different, more personally owned, and perennially (I just typed “perennially” as I heard someone say it in the podcast I’m half listening to, BTW) worth revisiting. Movies that ended up in a DVD collection had a real personal significance that is lost in our current experience of patchwork streaming services.
3. So, I used a slick, superfast, 1TB flash drive to quickly put 4 film files on my phone, roughly 1 GB each: L.A. Confidential, Fried Green Tomatoes, Memento, and Kinsey. Don’t ask me about the thought process by which I made this particular selection out of 100 or so films. Some I went in looking for, some just looked worthy of a revisit. I know that the choice of Fried Green Tomatoes was inspired in part by recently seeing Daryl Davis speak about his experience of deconverting somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 Ku Klux Klan members by gradually befriending them and challenging their worldview - the KKK makes an appearance in that film.
4. I mentally prepared to watch these. I had to pick which one to start with, and that took a bit of mental evaluation. Ultimately I settled on Memento. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s a slick indy film from the turn of the millennium. It was Christopher Nolan’s breakout, featuring all the distinctive auteurial marks with which we still associate him: clever and unconventional narrative structure, moody atmosphere, psychologically intense storytelling that investigates the very fabric of reality and knowledge itself (we’ll come back to that!). Recent hits include Inception, Dunkirk, and Interstellar, with The Prestige serving as a transition between these Hollywood blockbusters and the arthouse roots of Memento. 2 decades ago I was OBSESSED with Memento, without completely understanding it honestly. It’s still good, but not quite as good as I remember. At any rate, that’s what I decided to start with.
5. Heidi and I went to Goodwill. She needed old books for an art project and I decided to tag along. I happen to be fond of books too 🙂 We spend some time browsing. We’re one of those families who have SO many books, and we can’t resist bringing home just a FEW more, even though we end up brining plenty of them to Goodwill ourselves! One book in particular stands out to me. I can’t explain why. It just catches my attention. It’s Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. Something about the spine, both the title and the contrast of the font. I can’t explain why it stands out, why it’s so salient. I stand there holding the book, turning it over, considering, studying, for at least a couple minutes. Time is suspended as I do. It feels like the kind of thing I would have really dug 20 years ago, back when I was reading The Onion much more religiously, and totally obsessed with Memento… (That’s me giving voice to my intuition in retrospect - I wasn’t that clear on it in the moment) Ultimately I decide that it’s not the right book for me. It doesn’t quite feel like my bag anymore, so I put it back on the shelf. Heidi finds her books, and we’re on our way.
6. Later that evening I’m watching Memento on my phone, immersing myself once again in this bizarre, dangerous, squalid world of self-delusion and manipulation awash in seedy hotels, drug dealers, crooked cops, and femme fatales. The plot and themes are clearer to me now than they were 20 years ago and, honestly, the movie is less interesting. That’s growth for ya’. As I often do, I search for cultural commentary on the artifact, pulling up the Wikipedia article about the movie. I’m about two thirds of the way through, getting into the section called “Interpretations and analysis” and there it is. See it?
I was like, WHAT?!!! Seriously? No. Way. 🤯 And this is a feeling I’m accustomed to having. But even by my standards this one felt extraordinary and uncanny. That book, at Goodwill, the day I dig back into Memento after 20 years, during a time in my life when others are relying on me to help them interpret similar stories within their own subjective sense of narrative reality.
What are the odds? Is it even possible to calculate? Whatever the answer, at this point I knew I needed to return for the book.
7. The next day (Saturday) I went to Goodwill with my oldest son to purchase Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs. I’ve been working with him on a self-image script (ask if you’re curious) to help improve his results, and that’s what we did during the car ride.
8. Over the weekend, and for a good deal of Monday, I read parts of the book. Did I LOVE it? Not exactly. My intuition in segment 5 was correct. I have largely moved on from this. The cultural commentary, while clever and thought-provoking at times, feels self-indulgent and overwrought. Not my bag anymore. But…
9. The author, Chuck Klosterman, clearly identifies himself as a kindred spirit along my personal and professional quest. In the introduction he says…
“The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive [I agree with this], and there is a myriad of ways to deduce that answer; I just happen to prefer examining the question through the context of Pamela Anderson and The Real World [dated references, penned in 2003] and Frosted Flakes. It’s no less plausible than trying to understand Kant or Wittgenstein. And while half of my brain worries that writing about Saved by the Bell and Memento will immediately seem as outdated as a 1983 book about Fantasy Island and Gerry Cooney, my mind’s better half knows that temporality is part of the truth.”
He’s trying to figure out reality too - what is real, how best to relate to it, and what we can know for sure. The chapter featuring his analysis of Memento is all about that. I’ve been fascinated by Kant in recent weeks. And Wittgenstein just came up in research I did for a client about the problem of other minds, which led me to Alan Turing and early AI.
So, are you convinced? Is this incident SO thoroughly unlikely that it could only be engineered by the intentional probability-defying machinations of a benevolent deity guiding me along a highly specific and personalized path? People tell me I'm a smart, knowledgeable guy, and that’s something I’ve worked for 4 decades to offer with humility and love. No matter how smart and knowledgeable you are, most psychological and statistical theories tell us that we, all of us, with no exceptions, are prone to self-deception and confirmation bias. That’s actually EXACTLY what Memento is about, at its very essence. So, how am I to proceed, even with full knowledge of this, and the faith that I hold in the scientific process, designed and executed in every way to cut through these very self-deceptive tendencies with a minimum of mercy and sensitivity?
I don’t know. Socrates knew he was wise precisely because of what he DIDN’T know. Western philosophical inquiry itself is founded on that original and endlessly circular paradox. And I take it to heart.
I’ll be honest. This feels highly significant and unlikely to me. The degree of integration with the current sources of significance, meaning, and validation in my life, which seem to be deeper and more authentic than any I have ever experienced, is overwhelming and truly seems to defy coincidence. Human life and subjectivity IS our laboratory, and that’s why we can’t ever verify this kind of thing experimentally. Sorry to break it to you. But, even if we could, it would feel a lot like trying to internalize the essence of that butterfly by pinning it under a glass case, wouldn’t it?
Keep dancing. Metaphysics is the study of what’s real. Epistemology is the study of how we know, if it’s even possible. And these problems will never go away, simply due to the nature of human existence, which we all well understand. In the words of an academic philosophy textbook I picked up at a used book store a couple weekends before I did Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, “metaphysics and epistemology are dancing partners; you never find one far from the other”. So, perhaps more completely I should call myself a “Metaphysical and Epistemological Leadership Mentor”, but it doesn’t have quite the same ring. Still, it’s another service I offer.
And there’s another synchronicity which I hadn’t even considered until this moment - the salient items emerging from the vast expanses of two very different used bookstores within the space of a month, both exploring the same themes, themes relevant to my life and work, approached through very different cognitive tools.
The philosophy textbook is the one that I’ll return to most. I prefer Kant to Klosterman. That’s just me. But it’s also why people value what I bring. And I guess Memento is where they meet.
Here’s the conclusion, at which I arrived in a conversation during the previous week with a beautiful soul who promises to become a client, right before the universe saw fit to deliver to me this uncanny sign of my own, practically gift-wrapped in its personalization: narrative significance can never be quantified.
That is the essence of our human metaphysical and epistemological question. Without narrative there is no meaning. Meaning is the most important quality for us, and it happens to be the one that most defies scientific capture and quantification.
And that’s why we can never be sure, which is the very definition of epistemological humility, and also means we must rely on faith to some degree. To navigate this, let meaning by your currency AND your guide. It’s really the only way we’ve ever had.
Need metaphysical and epistemological guidance of your own? It’s my specialty.
P. S. - Just watched Kinsey again, and this quote stood out from the film’s concluding scenes (paraphrased): “It’s impossible to measure love, and without measurement there can be no science. But that’s not the same thing as saying it doesn’t matter."
In a certain realm, from a certain perspective, it all comes together. So, where’s YOUR vantage point?