Reply #2: Welp I think different people derive meaning from and to vastly varying degrees.

[stellanoir]

Having read a fair amount of Jungian literature, studied symbolism, and experienced a host of synchronicities in my life, I don't necessarily see coincidences and meaningful events as being mutually exclusive.

Free will predicates whether one wishes to read into coincidences or remain oblivious.

As Dylan so insightfully quilled ". . .take what you have gathered from coincidence. . ."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E06SoECIp1U

Or as I've said for years. . .the universe tends to have increasingly less subtle ways of capturing our full attention. That's why it's always advisable to pay attention to sometimes less than overt omens before one ends up being clobbered by a not so subtle cosmic sledgehammer.

OTOH as anti Freudians have often said in reaction to his incessant phallic associations, "sometimes a pencil is just a pencil." LOL

I tend to read too much into **everything**. You should have seen my over personalized reaction to when I blew out the universal joint on my chariot.
Yikes. I was a fierce proponent of car-ar-olgy at the time.

That reminds me of a really obscure Tarot deck a dear friend owns. It was a whacky combination of Christian and Egyptian imagery. The line from its accompanying booklet for the Fool card was, "The only thing that exceeds your stupidity is your inability to recognize it."

The booklet was so OTT with negativity that it was perversely funny. We used to call it the demon deck. It had interpretations like "Shipwreck," "go to the Dentist," and "a dark haired man will deceive you."

We had another friend who used to always ask for Tarot readings. And after getting an in depth reading her final spurious question would always be, "will I have a delightful surprise. . .?" For years she'd then pull either the 9 of swords or the 10 of swords.

Finally she had a reading from the demon deck and she asked it her requisite and ridiculous closing question and she pulled the 10 of swords and the demon deck's booklet actually said "you will have a delightful surprise."

It was so ironic we all cracked up and she, to my knowledge, stopped asking that question.