Synchrodipity

I just experienced a case of synchronicity. Or was it serendipity? Actually, I think it was both. Kind of like that certain breath tablet containing two mints in one. Raise your hand if you recollect that commercial.

Sue and I sometimes joke that my brain is something like a record player. You never know where the needle is going to come down. So it is that I might find myself singing a tune out of the blue, one that perhaps hadn't crossed the threshold into my consciousness for a decade or maybe even five.

Now, I do know that the record player analogy dates me, for now one would more likely talk about about random access memory and so on and so forth.

Onto to the actual storyline for this post.

So it was that the word, Zugzwang, popped into my brain late one night, probably when I was in that somewhat stuporous state of being — neither quite awake nor quite asleep.

Let's put that aside for now while I seemingly move onto a different topic — memory loss, or more to the point searching for words, mainly nouns.

I knew that I had blogged about memory and how frustrating it can be to fumble about  for the right word when in conversation. In fact, I have experienced that more than once, but I mentioned the specific phrase, losing my nouns, quite specifically in this post: Memory Kicks In.

That is when the synchrodipity thing kicked in, and I found that I had once (ahem, speaking of memory loss) posted about Zugzwang. That post recounts how at that time I had forgotten the word but remembered its meaning. Strangely enough that incident also occurred when I was in a somewhat somnolent state.

On this occasion, I remembered both the word and the meaning, but I cannot remember why the word surfaced in the first place. However, I suppose that remembering both the word and the definition is an improvement.

Of course, I also discovered that my pronunciation had never been quite perfect.

Memory is a odd thing and probably seldom to be trusted. There have been studies about the unreliability of memory, some of them in reaction to that whole Recovered Memory craze that swept society several decades ago.

The main point now, however, is that in this case I find it intriguing how these two strains of recent but seemingly unrelated thoughts came together in such a way.

I still don't know whether it is more a case of synchronicity or serendipity, but I love it anyway, almost as much as I love my new word, synchrodipity, particularly since it gave me something to write about on a Sunday morning.

If anyone wishes to know what in tarnation this Zugzwang thing is all about, please refer to my former post, for the definition is somewhat tangential to this particular post. But it is still interesting — to me, at least.