If a crow flies across your path, do you follow it, note it, or alter you day because of it?
I don't, though the appearance of birds and other animals used to be interpreted as signs of good fortune or bad fortune to come.
While writing, I tend to see signs of a different sort. People often say that once they think of something or have a conversation about something, that same something starts showing up everywhere. I have become quite used to this while doing research or looking for inspiration.
When I'm stuck and the words just aren't going anywhere, I will "randomly" pick up a book and there's the information I need, or at least the idea. With conscious intent, I'll surf out to a website looking for ABC, only to find links to XYZ, something I also needed but didn't yet know where to search for it.
Perhaps you have found this to be the case in your job, with your hobbies and avocations, or even with your leisure time. Once you turn away from the project at hand for a moment, new ideas begin showing up in the most unexpected places...a book, a TV show, a conversation with a friend, something you overhear in the checkout line at the grocery store.
Deepak Chopra, in The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire, calls this synchrodestiny. That is, once we acknowledge and then begin expecting the synchronicity of events around us to have a meaning that applies to our hopes and dreams of the moment, we are using synchrodestiny.
Does the crow flying across your path know its flight has meaning to you? Does the random comment of a friend that begins a chain reaction of thoughts that lead to a solution somewhere in your life know his or her words were such a catalyst? Probably not. But you do, and that's what matters.
The Universe, some say, will always conspire to give you what you're seeking. I like that, so I'm always looking for signs.
