Rhythm
By: Jake Kahana
Tags: Self-awareness, Lifestyle Design, Self, Music, Procrastination

I. Personal History Calendar

In 2011, I started a project I called the Personal History Calendar. I designed a calendar and listed events over the year aiming for 365 days of memorable personal events– firsts, and milestones, and memorable nights. The intention was to create a calendar with an anniversary of personal history for every day. Eventually being able to have a full year full of memories, knowing that in today’s history I tried Kangaroo meat for the first time (2009), and tomorrow is the anniversary of my first flight (1985).

Sure, TimeHop and Facebook will tell you that today is the anniversary of the day you became friends with that guy you sat next to in Earth Sciences in college. But the Personal History Calendar is more intimate and revealing than that. Before documentation. Things that shouldn’t be public.

I stopped at around 190 events; just over half mostly because I just could not wring out enough personal details to fill the full year. Perhaps I’ll continue to add to it. Over the course of my life, will I be able to create moments and memories for every day? Or will September 27 always be a day where nothing great happens, while September 28 has 6 different memories? It feels as though some days attract action, while some just get skipped.

Our days have an energy. Our weeks pulse alternating stress and relaxation. Our years have periods of intensity and then calm. Chapters. Decades. The further out we zoom from this current moment, we can see that our entire lives have a rhythm. Ups and downs, tension and release.

This month I’m exploring the idea of rhythms and timing in our lives.

Let’s dance.

“Sultanahmet” digital photograph by Aydin Buyuktis

II. When in Rhyme…

This past Tuesday, I woke up a little earlier to get a nice little jog in before the weather got too cold.

As I started, I felt great. The music was driving me and the air was perfect. I was on fire. 10 minutes quickly turned into 20 and when I usually start to feel pain in my knees I was picking up the pace. My legs kept pushing, my arms kept pumping and my breathing was consistent.

The rhythm of my music was in perfect sync to my run. My steps hit every beat. The lights turned green as I approached and the world seemed to be cheering me on.

It’s an amazing feeling when the world feels aligned to our direction, giving us signs that you’re doing things right and blowing wind into our sails.

It’s called synchronicity.

It’s the experience of hearing a song that reminds you of a friend that you’ve lost touch with, only to get an email from her the same day. It’s needing to make a difficult decision, saying out loud “what should I do?” and at that moment, a bus drives by with an advertisement whose headline gives you your answer. It’s getting a call from a number ending in 1525 just as you’re paying for your breakfast which is also $15.25.

Synchronicity was coined by psychologist Carl Jung to describe events that occur at the same time, without a shared cause, but are connected in meaning. Synchronicity goes beyond coincidence–not just happening at the same time. There is some meaningful connection that goes beyond scientific explanation.

Surely it’s more than luck. These “rhyming events” mean something, right?

I’ve done some research and there are 3 likely justifications to explain synchronicity.

One explanation is human psychology.

Our brains are naturally meaning-making machines. We look for the signs we need to help us make difficult decisions we couldn’t easily make on our own so we connect events that happen randomly and assign meaning.

Another is mathematics and probability.

The Law of Truly Large Numbers states that in any extremely large data set, any outrageous and unusual event is likely to occur. It’s merely coincidence and it’s not unusual in the spectrum of possibilities that the same number would show up several times in a day, for example.

The last explanation (and go with me on this for a minute) is divine Intervention.

God, an angel, fate or higher power is sending you a message. YOU. The events were a message meant for you. The universe knows your name and is trying to tell you something. (Even talking about “the universe” is a way of discussing a higher power without getting into a conversation about religion.) Believing that “the universe” sends messages and aligns events for a purpose is to believe in a higher power.

Maybe you believe in God. Maybe you believe in “the universe.” Maybe not. But all of this speculating and sorting out what I believe in leads me to this question:

Do I believe the universe is chaos– that we’re anonymous in a world of 7 billion, all with random, unrelated events?

Or would I rather believe that there is an order– that the universe knows who I am, and is sending me signs and messages?

What do you believe?