There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything were a miracle.
~Albert Einstein
My daughter Lauren and I were driving to Halifax where she had an appointment with an ophthalmologist to see if anything could be done about her clogged tear duct.
It was snowing, the roads were snowy and slippery, and we had 350 kilometers to drive there and 350 to return. While I wasn’t expecting 450 miles of white driving for a 15-minute date, I was really looking forward to spending time with her. She has this natural, instinctive way of not only making you feel good about yourself, no matter how you feel, but she’s a master at getting you out of your worries and into what’s really right in the world.
As we drove, weaving between empty spaces in the road that weren’t covered in snow, counting the cars that had skidded into the ditch and changing the CDs on the stereo from “Alexis on Fire” to something else, he blurted out “Dad, you know what is my favorite saying?
“What is it?” I asked, dragging my attention from driving to her words.
“Parallel Synchronized Randomness,” he said.
“Parallel Syncho what? What is that?” I asked for.
“It’s when the random events in your life line up to look like they were planned that way and were supposed to happen.” She answered. “You know what I mean?”
Boy, did I ever know what he meant. One of my favorite sayings is “There are no coincidences in life.” There are too many things that happen to me that make me go “Hmmm”.
For example, when I’ve been trying to connect with people about my ebook, I’m meeting people I’ve never met before, but I feel like I’ve known them my whole life. I learned from Bob delBuono, an old mentor and friend, 15 years ago that when life gives you the opportunity to meet someone from whom you can learn about your current situation, you had better take the time to connect with that person in that moment. and there, because it will not happen a second time. Those “stars” may never align again and I would have missed an opportunity to get clarity or direction on what I needed to know.
Take, for example, how I met Tom Voccola.
Three weeks ago, I couldn’t tell him apart from Adam, but I’m sure I was supposed to. In case you haven’t heard of Tom, and I’m sure you will soon, he is the author of a book called The Accidental CEO-A leader’s journey from ego to Purpose. I met him through a Facebook-like business networking site called Linkedin. I was looking at my third level of contacts, I don’t know what for, when I saw his name. My fingers were obviously more in tune with the universe than my mind and they clicked on his profile and voila, three weeks later we shared emails back and forth, Tom wrote a testimonial for my e-book, we talked on the phone, and we’re eager to see how we can support each other in business. Parallel Synchronized Randomness.
The person you meet on the sidewalk who knows a person you should know. She rings the phone, she’s someone who dials a wrong number, but somehow you get to talk and she knows all the answers you’re looking for. He gets a flat tire while he’s driving to work and someone stops to help him and this person happens to meet someone she’s been trying to meet and makes the introduction. The book that magically appears on your desk one morning and no one knows how it got there, but it contains the secrets you’ve been looking for.
Life is a miracle as big as you want it to be.
I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.
When we go out each morning, if we can open ourselves to these experiences, it is amazing how far we could go in life, but we must be in tune with the “music” that is playing. If we are always connected to our “me” capsules, we will get lost and sometimes walk past the “you” capsules that are all around us, waiting to be discovered.
This week, take the time to listen to what’s going on around you. Be curious. Don’t take any random occurrence at face value and be in tune with the life circumstances you find yourself in. Dare to discipline yourself to look behind the randomness of them and you may find answers to life’s challenges that you have been searching for. But you have to be open to taking risks and seeing where it will take you.
Make this the best week of your life.
Pablo