Image description: A hand is holding a tarot card, Two of Swords by Pamela Colman Smith from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. Behind the card is green grass and the edge of a wooden fence. In the card, a person dressed in gray with a blindfold on and yellow shoes is seated on a concrete block holding two large swords, crossed over their chest. There is water behind them, and a crescent moon.
I’ve been asked twice in the last several weeks how I work with and think about synchronicity. The truth is I really don’t.
The prefix ‘synch’ suggests sameness in a way that feels at odds with my interest in difference. Difference as in philosopher Kelly Oliver’s notion of love:
“Love is…an ethics of otherness that thrives on the adventure of otherness [and] requires a commitment to the…nurturing of difference.”
I’m less interested in the accordance of rhythms, and more in what happens when two beats are playing at the same time and clashing.
So I haven’t been working much with the idea of synchronicity. But I have been working with the idea of intensity, which feels related.
Intensity is the name we give for the tension that happens when contradictory forces confront one another, and no one dominates or submits.
Intensity yields potential. It’s a quality from which something miraculous can happen. Something never before seen. Something that could not have happened if one force took over and the other gave way.
(I’m drawing from—and oversimplifying—the work of philosopher Brian Massumi.)
Potential is an interesting thing, too. It has roots in words that mean “to stretch.” When I feel stretched in some way, I often say “it’s intense.”
I think these ideas can be useful when thinking about the intensity of big feelings.
Big feelings are often born from the confrontation of forces.
A need to be seen clashes with an unresponsive environment.
A force of degradation descends upon something indisputably precious.
These encounters often generate intense feelings.
I’ve been considering collaboration a lot lately too, and have found these ideas about intensity and potential useful. Collaboration is also a meeting of forces and—to the degree no one is dominating or submitting—can also be quite intense.
Collaboration involves doing work together, across and with difference.
Ideally space is made for all involved so that collaboration is like love; an adventure in otherness. Collaboration might even be a synonym for love, if we view love as an action.
This week in I pulled Two of Swords.
In the Thoth deck, Two of Swords is called Peace, which might seem a quintessential “other” of intensity.
In fact the card depicts the confrontation of forces—two swords crossing—and an intensity that occurs there.
The artist Freida Harris marked that point of intensity with a blue rose. An oddity. Something never before seen.
For Brian Massumi, potential exists in a realm where “what are normally opposites coexist, coalesce, and connect.” Intensity and potential are related.
At the point of tension where we bump up against difference there’s potential to stretch in new ways.
To bloom into something, other than what we have been.