Synchronicity: What, if anything does it Mean?

For a long time, from once in a while to an occasional sequence, I have occasionally experienced bizarre coincidences. I have read a number of books by and about Carl Gustav Jung who wrote concerning this phenomenon, which he dubbed "synchronicity." I also read a couple of books by Arthur Koestler on the same phenomenon, in which Koestler enumerated a few sequential occurrences which seemed to have meaning for him and Koestler philosophized on whether or not these situations had meaning.

I had a couple of strange coincidences happen to me last night and this morning, and will simply give you the facts.

At about midnight last night, I began watching a Discovery Channel program called "Dangerous Catch," which highlighted in great detail the perilous job of fishing for Alaskan King Crab in the Bering Sea. The program was extremely vivid concerning the dangers of fishing in terrible weather, and I watched fascinated for about forty-five minutes. While watching, I remembered that the son of a former State Department colleague of mine, Ambassador Robert Barry, was tragically killed while working on a fishing boat in Alaskan waters. I watched and remembered this terrible accident, which deprived a very talented young man out on a summer's job earning a lot of money of a promising life.

I went to sleep around 1AM and subsequently had very vivid dreams of Ambassador Barry and also of another colleague who worked with Barry at the State Department. The other FSO was Ambassador Thomas Niles, whom I knew well enough to visit his home and meet his family, and he and I once went to a Washington NBA game together, as we were both Bullets fans. My long and vivid dream was about both Ambassadors Barry and Niles.

At 7AM this morning, I was awakened by my daughter, whom I drove to school. I picked up the Financial Times on my driveway, and there on the Op-Ed page of the FT was an Opinion piece co-authored by Thomas Niles entitled "Sustainable fisheries serve a common interest." Ambassador Niles is the Vice Chairman of the United States Council for International Business and writes about the potential collapse of ocean fisheries. The tie between the TV program "Dangerous Catch," my dream linking Barry and Niles, and the Op-Ed on fisheries might qualify for synchronicity or for skeptics, terminal weirdness. But it is bizarre when it happens, as serial-linkage has to me on several occasions in the past.

I guess this might be what Robert Graves called "proleptic thought" when he wrote the classic White Goddess, concerning his paranormal experiences which he claimed inspired him to write this "historical grammar of poetic myth." Strangely, I had what might be called another strange synchronicity-event in the Library of Congress in DC when a young woman walked up to me asking for the subtitle of Graves's weird chef d'oeuvre. Which I immediately gave her.