Do you believe in ‘signs’? Those seemingly random occurrences in your day which make you instinctively challenge the likelihood of the event? Do you ultimately conclude “coincidence”, or is it… just maybe… something more?
I epitomized the word skeptic for 90% of my life. Thank GOD that I’m actively living in the other 10% now, because I may have not had a chance to share this story with you if I wasn’t.
With my hands still trembling as I write this, this is the true recap of how 3 signs, my belief in them, and YOU helped me avoid a major accident this morning.
24 Hours, 3 Signs, 1 Moment
the background of the Signs in the background
I will spare you an elaborate recap of my journey from logical thinker to intuitive believer. That story is scattered throughout LoopholesOnLife, and you can piece it together at your leisure.
If hundreds witnessed a unicorn sliding down a rainbow & sprinkling fairy dust upon them; I’d be the first to insist the local air quality be tested to determine if insufficient oxygen levels had a mass hallucinogenic effect.
What I can assure you is, up until about 3 years ago, I operated out of my left brain for nearly 100% of the time. I have always been a “dot connecter”, after all, there is plenty of logic behind trends, patterns and yes, even (or perhaps especially) anomalies.
Makes it even sadder in some ways, because what I am really saying is I’ve always “seen the signs”, but I would dedicate the rest of my time thinking about the reasons they were not meaningful beyond “happen-stance”.
Put another way, I was the type of person that could witness a unicorn sliding down a rainbow while sprinkling fairy dust on hundreds of bystanders – and insist that we test the air quality of the area to determine whether insufficient oxygen levels may have caused a mass hallucinogenic effect.
Now, however, if that same unicorn descended upon that same crowd – it is not that I no longer believe that a lack of oxygen or poor air quality could have that effect – it’s that it TRULY DOESN’T MATTER. It happened. It was experienced, and it was an experience shared by many. Understanding “Signs” is not about the CAUSE, it is about the EFFECT!
Living proof of an undying art
Belief in the providence of signs is, as all things, cyclical in nature. Socially, we literally shift from prioritizing the left brain, finding ourselves in a rut, then pendulum swinging to the right brain. Then the cycle repeats in reverse. If you do not believe this, pick any point you’d like in history and work your way backwards and/or forwards.
Fortunately in my case, and in my own sub-cycle, being so ‘left-brained’ for so many years helped me balance a complete pendulum swing due to those very trends that I “see” and the negative impact caused by our “overcorrection” over time.
Today I was saved from a severe car accident because of my, still somewhat infant, belief in signs and synchronicity.
The story began when I woke up yesterday, and it ended when I woke up today – culminating in this blog post itself
Sign 1: Oh Dear, What Could the Matter be?
5:00 a.m. EST, Yesterday
Woke up earlier than normal, after going to bed earlier than I’d like to admit the night before and was not able to go back to sleep after waking in the middle of the night. A potentially important side note, depending on YOUR belief, is that I am RARELY sleepless. I do not need much sleep, but I also can sleep at the drop of a hat. In fact, one of my wife’s nicknames for me is “snooze”, lol.
I got in my car to go to the local speedway for a cup of coffee, as I do most mornings (working in Starbucks when I feel like a treat J).
As I drove down the street, still waking up as most of the world still slumbered, sign number 1:
Sign 1: “A bright light in the hospital parking-lot which is adjacent to my street turned on. It got my tired mind thinking for a millisecond, and RIGHT THEN, 2 deer ran right in front of my car.”
Having only moved to this neighborhood a few months back, there is much more ‘wilderness’ than we anticipated. Nevertheless – the deer were no surprise, but seeing them sprint in front of my car certainly was.
If that bright light had not turned on, I would have continued ‘zombie mode’, and would have almost certainly hit them.
I was only going about 20 mph, so it would not have been fatal by any means…
What I did not know, however, was that this experience was just the first of two more signs to come.
Sign 2: No Reason to Pass the Buck
5:40 a.m. EST, today
I woke up earlier than normal, for the second day in a row. I had a restless night sleep, which I rarely ever have, for the second day in a row. A sign was about to be shared with me, for the second day in a row.
Sign 2: “once again in the hospital parking lot, a “light” got me thinking. This time, though, a light TURNED OFF. When it did, I remembered what happened yesterday — then I looked to my right, and saw a deer in the neighbor’s yard. This was a DIFFERENT dear than the two does that ran in front of me the day before, as I had never seen one in our neighborhood antlers previously.”
It got me thinking. That was all. No harm no fowl. The deer, this time, never even put hoof to pavement.
Again, though, and importantly… it got me thinking.
Sign 3: A Little Critter on a Wet Road and You on my Mind!
5:43 a.m. EST, today
What does a light turning on one day, revealing deer – and a light turning off the next, hiding the deer visibly but making me more aware to its potential of being there – mean?!?
I didn’t care! Like I mentioned before – I try to be at peace with this kind of stuff. I spent 27 years of my life under-thinking it, a few months overthinking it, and now I just try to be aware and at peace with it.
HOWEVER, the combination of lights and deers, two separate mornings, was enough for my left brain to cry “anomaly” and my right brain to be accepting of the potential ‘sign’.
I was thinking, waking, and cruising at about 45 mph down a dark, cold, wet road…. Then, suddenly, I came across sign 3, or better put, it came across me!
Sign 3: “a huge, dark, critter jolted across the road. It was too big to be a raccoon, I think at least – it moved extremely fast though.”
While I am an animal lover, I am not the type that would out of instinct sacrifice my lane on the road for the sake of the animal’s jay-waking decision. However, I do see many cars “veer” out of instinct, and on this two lane road – it was enough to get me contemplating further…
I said to myself, “thank God that wasn’t one of those deer I’ve been seeing!”
Then I thought of you….
5:45 a.m. EST, today
I thought about this. I thought about the fact that “ooh, at some point I should write a loophole article about signs, symbols, etc.”. Those 3 signs lead me to a point where I had concluded, at a minimum, they reminded me to write an article about signs.
Were the signs leading to this particular conclusion example worthy? Not yet…
This is where YOU helped more than you know. So thank you for being there for me, even unknowingly.
THEN…A Couple Things Flashed Before My Eyes…
5:46 a.m. EST, today
Still thinking of signs, of this subject matter and of my particular signs – still thinking about how much I’ve changed – I was still thinking, “I wonder what that crazy dark and crazy fast critter was”. I was still thinking, and thankful, that “I am sure glad that the critter wasn’t something larger…”
Within a minute or two from seeing that critter — IT HAPPENED. Honestly, the biggest deer I’ve seen since visiting my Grandparents cottage in northern Wisconsin jumped out RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CAR.
There is ZERO DOUBT in my mind that if I had not been thinking about YOU, thinking about an article about signs, that I would not have been so quick to HONOR them by “being ready”. I do not know that I would have died, but it would NOT have been a good situation, particularly since a truck was coming down the other side of this 2 lane ‘country highway’.
I needed to be thinking of you – thinking of this article to avoid it. I needed the critter to finally ‘trigger’ thinking of this article. I needed TWO lights turning on and off on TWO different days across THREE separate deer, in order to avoid the FOURTH, and most hazardous, deer at the end.
Amazing how many “signs” it took for someone who believes in them to finally “get the hint”…
8:25 a.m. EST, today
Perhaps I would have not experienced a car accident either way. Again though, I no longer challenge the validity of ‘signs’, asking what-if questions to a universe with infinite probabilities is as fruitless as an apple tree in a frozen tundra. Would I have had an accident without the signs? Maybe, maybe not…
Or maybe, just maybe, the signs are not done. Maybe, just maybe, it was not about me at all. Maybe, just maybe, they were for YOU!
Remember, since the moment of creation we’ve all been connected. Perhaps, I needed those signs to write an article about signs for a reader who needed just a little reminder.
To learn this kind of “sign language”, all you have to do is listen with your heart.
Signing off.
