Carl Jung famously referred to occurrences of synchronicity as “meaningful coincidences that cannot be explained by cause and effect.” He thought that there was something more profound going on than sheer coincidence, something to do with a “deeper order of the universe…”
While I can see the attractiveness of this line of reasoning I find it hard to agree with the great man. For one thing, he does not seem to consider the far larger number of non-coincidences that occur every day to everyone on the planet. The countless times that coincidences are not happening is in some ways even more remarkable than the few times they do occur, given the billions of lives being lived at any one time. Indeed, one could counter Jung’s hypothesis by stating that the very scarcity of synchronistic events is proof that they are simple – albeit often remarkable – happenstance.
In my own life, I have experienced three remarkable, apparently synchronistic episodes. The first, I recounted in an earlier post (here), and was merely charming. The second, which I describe below, was moving, and the third, to which I will devote a future post, was both powerful and disturbing.
The only common denominator in all three events was the fact that they all involved my wife Dido, and all happened within a two-year timeframe – more or less. The first; from slightly before I met her, the second; just after we met, and the third; about the time we were engaged to be married. No doubt Jung would have something to say about that too, but for boring old me, it was just another coincidence.
Anyhow, this is the second “happening” and please judge for yourselves whether or not something “deeper” was going on: It was early in 1989, and Dido and I had been dating a few weeks. She was then an occupational therapy student working on her first clinical placement at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow (North West London). During her placement, most evenings, she would stop by my family home in West Hampstead for some supper, and sometimes to stay over.
Just to paint the scene – our home was inhabited by my mother Hannah, my recently-widowered grandfather Harry Pizan, and me. After supper, we would typically settle down in the sitting room to either watch some TV or play something like a game of Scrabble. I think it was on the very first day of Dido’s Northwick Park placement, when, in this relaxing setting, she said, looking at my grandfather, ‘I was allocated my first patient today – an elderly gentleman with cancer of the spine – and strangely, he has the same surname as you! Pizan. Didn’t you tell me that your family were the only Pizans* in England?’
To which my grandfather replied, “Yes, we are.” he then asked Dido, “Is this man called Rube?”
“Yes, Rubin Pizan!” Dido exclaimed.
“He’s my brother! You patient is Rube, my younger brother…”
(“Pizan” was a name allocated to my great grandfather – Harry’s father – and his then-small family, when they landed at Irongate Wharf, London, in 1903, by an immigration officer who must have thought it approximated to whatever name my Polish and Yiddish-speaking “great zaida” had actually said. My cousin Bernard informs me that the name was originally PISEM and was changed to Pizan by deed poll by the family members. We (the surviving family) are not quite clear why the change was made – whether Pisem was a misreading by an immigration official, and the name really was originally Pizan, or something else perhaps? At any rate the name was changed, and thank goodness it was! “Pisem just doesn’t do it for me! This sort of muddle was a common occurrence, wherever Jewish emigres landed up, from London to New York City.)
*The title illustration and the picture above are watercolours I made of Northwick Park Hospital when I was studying art next door, at Harrow School of Art.
ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA 