Below is Part 3 in our Synchronicity Lessons series on how to find awe and utilize the power of synchronicities in everyday life — written by Anne Heleen Bijl, board member of The Coincidence Project and leadership consultant.

(Find Part 1 here: Believe in the Butterflies. And Part 2 here: For the Greater Good.)

When a meaningful coincidence occurs, many people turn away from it because it does not fit their understanding of how the world works. It feels impossible, and what feels impossible is often dismissed. Yet synchronicity does not wait for proof or permission. It asks for attention.

The response remains a choice. Each person can look for meaning, ignore it, or engage with it and see what follows. Expecting the unexpected creates a different posture. It allows these moments to be approached in the same way dreams are approached—not as problems to solve, but as symbolic communications that can be entered, explored, and lived with.

Over time, a pattern becomes visible. Synchronicity often acts as a signal, marking the beginning of something that continues beyond the moment itself. It does not stand alone. It opens a sequence.

I came to understand this most clearly when my father died forty years ago. He had been ill for two weeks. On August 14, I sat beside his bed in the fading evening light, listening to the silence between his breaths. At exactly 8:02 p.m., he died. At that same instant, outside the window, a large heron appeared and began circling slowly through the garden. I had never seen a heron there before. There was no pond, no stream, no clear reason for its presence. Yet it moved past the window with a calm precision, as if it had arrived at that exact moment.

The next evening, at two minutes past eight, I returned to the same room and waited. The heron appeared again.

A few days later, during the funeral procession, the car carrying us stopped at a railway crossing. As we waited, the same long-winged bird descended and began circling above the hearse on the other side of the barrier. Then it crossed back and circled above our car, moving between us as if maintaining a connection during that final passage.

Events like these resist explanation when approached only through logic. They do not organize themselves according to ordinary cause and effect. Yet something shifted in me through those moments. Death no longer appeared as a closed boundary. It revealed an opening—one that could be sensed but not fully explained.

Since then, each year on August 14, just before eight o’clock, I step away from whatever I am doing and go for a solitary walk. I pause and remain attentive. In many of those years, a heron appears.

What this has taught me is direct. To feel connected to the deeper patterns moving through life, a person must allow space for what does not fit expectation. Availability matters. Attention matters.

Intuition does not arrive with a complete explanation. Synchronicity does not present itself in forms that can be easily categorized. Yet when these moments are followed—when a person moves with what feels quietly right, even without immediate clarity—new understanding forms. Perspective shifts. Direction changes.

The unexpected does not always interrupt what is happening.

At times, it extends it.

At times, it invites.

Photo by Bob Brewer on Unsplash