synchronicities

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that, earlier in my life, I used to “daydream” (for lack of a better term) about things I wanted to do or people I wanted to work with. This was before I’d ever heard about visualizing what you want. Shakti Gawain’s Creative Visualization was way off in the future. And yet…a lot of the time (enough that, in hindsight, it was uncanny), the stuff I daydreamed about came true. The person I admired or wanted to work with would call me a few weeks later, or I would run into them at a party.

Then I went through a difficult period that made me doubt myself in a lot of ways and temporarily short-circuited my daydreaming/visualizing mechanism. It’s been a long road back, but along the way, I’ve learned that the daydreaming I used to do—with no real expectation of things coming true—is something people have been doing (and teaching) for years, whether they called it “The Power of Positive Thinking” or “The Law of Attraction”…or whatever. I still have my moments of doubt, but then there are times when some crazy little synchronicity happens, and I think, “Okay, okay…I get it. It works.”

So…here’s the story of the latest of these strange little harmonic convergences.

I’ve wanted to have a pair of real, honest-to-God, wood Adirondack chairs ever since I first saw them—which was a long time ago. However, they’re not cheap (at least not the ones I wanted), and so, for the starving artist that I’ve been for most of my life, they were never in the budget. My next-door neighbors in Richmond had a quartet of them, painted pristine white, that I could see from my kitchen window. I coveted them badly.

Fast forward to now. I moved back to my home state of North Carolina a year ago, and I rented a cute little house in a great neighborhood. Even though it’s not my house or property, I’ve been slowly trying to create a bit of a garden and outdoor living space. Anyway, a month or so ago, I passed a house with a set of Adirondack chairs in the yard, and my desire for my own pair welled up again. My thoughts in the moment ran something along the lines of “Okay, Universe, I’d really like to finally have a pair of honest-to-God Adirondack chairs, you know? And since I don’t really have it in the budget to buy a pair right now, it would be great if I could get a pair for free.”

That was it. Conversation over. I went on with my day and forgot all about it. After all, I’ve been lusting after Adirondack chairs for decades.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I was driving down a street in my neighborhood, and lo and behold, I see two Adirondack chairs sitting at the street along with a bunch of tattered tiki torches! I swerved over to the curb and screeched to a halt, thinking all the while (in an attempt to prep myself for disappointment), “Oh, they’re probably falling apart/rotting/dangerous to sit in/not worth having.” Instead, much to my surprise, the chairs were pretty solid.

The only problem I could see (easily fixed) was that the arm of one of the chairs had split a little and needed to be braced and re-attached to the front arm post. The chairs were the soft gray of weathered natural wood, which I kind of liked, and besides, I could always paint them later. Not believing my luck, and afraid that the homeowner might come out and say they’d changed their mind about the chairs, I ran back to my little Honda Element (which I’d bought for hauling moments like this one), flipped up the rear seats, and wrestled the chairs into the back (real Adirondack chairs are not lightweight).

It was a busy week for me, so when I got home, I dragged them to the back yard and left them there, figuring to repair the broken one later, when I had time. I didn’t even have the time to sit down in one of them and savor the fact that I finally had my own Adirondacks.

Until yesterday morning, that is, when I finally took my cup of coffee and went outside to sit and enjoy the unseasonably cool July morning. Believe it or not, it didn’t dawn on me until that very moment that the Universe had delivered exactly what I’d asked for: a pair of real, honest-to-God Adirondack chairs—for free.

I don’t know if there’s a word that describes the mixture of wonder, amusement, and pure delight I felt in that moment. In the grand scheme of things, this was not really a big deal, of course. Adirondack chairs aren’t exactly a necessity. I didn’t need them—after all, I’d lived without them for this long.

But I had wanted them. A lot.

I don’t know how the planets were aligned the day I put in my order for free Adirondack chairs, and I don’t remember making my request in any special way. However, in recent weeks, I’ve taken some risks that were necessities and made some decisions that required me to really trust that things would go the way I need them to, so I’m choosing to believe that the Universe decided to use the Adirondack chairs as a gentle reminder to me to: “Just keep following your intuition and asking for what you want. We’re listening, and it’s going to be okay.”

With all the cliff-jumping I’ve been doing lately, it’s nice to have that little nudge of reassurance—and I’m pretty happy about the chairs, too.