Brain Food #814: Finding what you had been looking for

Learning to see through synchronicity

Thoughts of the day

In art, synchronicity is described as the moment in which ‘the artist discovers inspiration in a place they might never have thought to look initially.’ In life, it is a coincidence that draws our attention, an invitation to our curiosity from the unknown, or perhaps our very unconscious.

In his journals, Henry David Thoreau wrote:
“Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.”

When you notice something, what are you truly seeing? In some ways, it might be what you had been looking for all along. Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico had a broad range of influences, from Nietzsche to Greek mythology. He said, “What is especially needed is great sensitivity: to look upon everything in the world as enigma.”

When something in the world peculiarly captures our attention, when we start to see patterns that are noticeable only to us, perhaps we should hold onto them a little longer; they could be indications of the questions we are striving to answer.

The Enigma of a Day by Giorgio de Chirico, 1914

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