Signs, Synchronicities, and the Art of Being Met

On asking without guarantees, listening without certainty, and choosing to live in conversation with the Universe

I flew back to Edinburgh, Scotland just before the new year, arriving with more than just a suitcase and an outline of a plan. I was carrying an ache that had been quietly forming for months — the ache of having imagined a life long enough that imagination was no longer sufficient.

The city met me with cold. The kind of cold that seeps into your bones slowly, insistently, and makes you fully aware of your body again. I wrapped my hands around cups of hot tea, grateful for the simple physics of warmth. I walked streets that felt both familiar and not yet mine, noticing how alert I felt, how awake, how present. There was a sense, almost immediately, that something in me had leaned forward. Not grasping, but listening.

And it didn’t take me long to realize that I was looking for a sign.

I wasn’t asking the Universe for certainty, or proof, or a neatly packaged answer. What I wanted was subtler than that — some indication, some felt sense, that this move, this reorientation of my life, was not something I was forcing into being, but rather something meant for me, a conversation rather than a declaration, a co-creation rather than a demand.

I’ve known for some time now that the deeper underlying structure of my life needs to change. I don’t want the next decade to look like a repeat of the past decade in a slightly altered form — not with my work, not with my health, not with my relationships. And yet, wanting change is not the same thing as knowing how it wants to arrive. There’s a difference between imagining a life and inhabiting it, between designing it in the mind and breathing it into being.

---

Asking, and the Risk of Silence

When you ask the Universe for a sign, you open yourself to the possibility of silence. No matter how many times I’ve asked and been answered, there is always a fear that the Universe may be quieter, flatter, less relational than I’ve hoped.

For me, the stakes are high. If this move — this pull toward Scotland — turned out to be wrong, it would shake something foundational within me about how I understand my own intuition and the world around me. It would ask me to reckon with how deeply I’ve trusted my own sensing, my own orientation toward meaning.

And still, I asked.

Asking for signs, for me, has never been about relinquishing agency. It isn’t about handing my decisions over to the Universe or waiting passively for direction. It’s about being in relationship with something larger than my own internal narrative. It’s saying, I’m here. I’m paying attention. Show me how this wants to unfold.

The challenge, of course, is that signs rarely arrive in the form we anticipate. Sometimes we ask for something specific — a feather, a symbol, a clear external marker — and receive exactly that. Sometimes specificity helps us see meaning more clearly. And sometimes it blinds us. I’ve had moments in my life where I asked for signs and felt unanswered, only to realize later that my vision had been too narrow.

This time, as I sat in a cafe journaling to unpack this desire, I didn’t know what the sign should be. I only knew what I was longing for: connection. Not surface-level friendliness or passing niceties, but depth and resonance. I wanted the feeling of being met without effort, without performance.

---

Being Met

That evening, I found myself in conversation with someone new. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no sense of fate announcing itself. There was just an unexpected ease, a depth that arrived without forcing. We talked about shared reference points: growing up in the 80s, the nostalgic resonance of Stranger Things, what it’s like to care deeply about health while also walking a spiritual path that doesn’t require leaving the body or the world behind.

It was the kind of conversation that could have lasted hours, leaving you feeling warmer than you were before. There was a quiet recognition in it.

What stayed with me afterward wasn’t the content of what we said so much as the timing of it. I had asked earlier that day — not for anything specific, not for proof — and I had been met. Not with certainty from the Universe, but with responsiveness. Not with a precise answer, but with presence.

That, I think, is often what a sign actually is.

---

What Makes Something a Sign

We tend to think of signs as symbols — external markers that point clearly in one direction or another. But more often, they’re experiences. Serendipitous moments that orient us rather than convince us.

The deeper fear around asking for signs is not simply that we won’t get what we want. It’s that the world itself might not answer back at all. That the mystery might be thinner than we hoped. That meaning is something we have to manufacture alone, in the vacuum of our own minds.

I don’t believe that.

I believe the Universe is responsive. That it wants to meet us when we engage it with sincerity and openness. But that kind of responsiveness requires a particular posture, one that values attunement over control and conversation over certainty.

---

Imagination, Participation, and the Threshold

Imagination is one of the ways we stay connected to possibility. It’s how we sense what might be becoming. But imagination alone can turn inward, looping endlessly. That’s where I found myself over the past few months: imagining moving overseas but having no real momentum in bringing that dream to life. There comes a moment when imagining is no longer sufficient, when we must step into dialogue with the world around us and ask “Is this really the next step? Is what I long for longing for me?”

Participation requires listening. It requires patience. It requires the willingness to be changed by what answers back.

So few people seem willing to live there anymore. Fewer still recognize that this threshold exists at all. It’s tempting to stay safe, to continue making choices based on who we were years ago simply because that life is familiar. I know I’ve been tempted by that sense of safety. But curiosity and change ask more of us.

---

Choosing More, Without Rejecting What Holds Me

My home in New Jersey still matters deeply to me. It’s familiar and grounding. It’s where my family is, where continuity lives. I’ve been talking to my father about consolidating our homes, moving into a structure there that supports being more family-oriented and closer to my brother. It feels right, necessary even. The change would allow for a rhythm that focuses on time together beyond holidays, being more present in the daily activities for my niece and nephew, and creating a support structure that’s physically close for everyone.

But that alone is not enough for me.

What I’m reaching for is a life that feels responsive. One that invites me into relationship with people, with place, with the unfolding itself. It would position me to have homes in both New Jersey and Scotland. I don’t yet know what this life will look like in full, only that when I lean into the potentiality and listen, something in me, something in the world answers yes.

---

Listening as a Practice

Asking for signs doesn’t absolve us of choice. It doesn’t hand us guarantees. What it offers, instead, is participation. An invitation to stay engaged with the mystery rather than standing apart from it.

To ask without demanding.

To listen without insisting on clarity.

To risk disappointment in exchange for aliveness.

The Universe, I think, is speaking.

The question is whether we’re willing to listen — not for certainty, but for conversation and connection.

---

I work with founders and organizations who know their current structure no longer fits what they’re becoming. If you’re standing at that kind of threshold, you can explore my strategy work through Alchemy + Aim.