Sometimes, you bump into someone and think: How the hell did this happen? I was thinking of her just a minute ago. I haven't seen her for over thirty years, and now she's suddenly here. Jung called this phenomenon synchronicity.
Sometimes, you bump into someone you have never met before and realize that this meeting is not just about meeting someone. It is something much more important. You can feel it. You know it. You may think that this must be your soul mate. Maybe it is. Or, maybe it is not.
Maybe you are supposed to marry this person, maybe you aren't. Perhaps you are soul mates, but you are not supposed to get married. Still, you are connected in some mysterious way. What is all this about?
Sometimes, you bump into someone you don't want to meet and have tried hard to avoid. And now you meet him here, of all places. What's going on? This is ridiculous.
You can also have a synchronistic meeting with a dangerous person, a psychopath, or a narcissist, and you get played. Later, you may wonder what that meeting was about. Was it arranged in some mysterious way to make you learn something about yourself? Or was it a punishment?
However, primarily, a chance meeting is just a regular chance meeting.
Why do meaningful chance meetings, or synchronicities, come about? You can never know for sure.
Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as "unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness." Wikipedia
According to the invisible ships myth, when European explorers' ships approached either North America, South America, or Australia, the appearance of their large ships was so foreign to the native people that they could not even see the vessels in front of them. Wikipedia
Some people can see things that don't exist; others can't see things that do.
