Synchronicity & Opportunity

It starts with mastery

At its core, mastery is the internalized application of knowledge - acting without thinking.

Sugar and fat don't become less tempting. We get better at avoiding their temptation.

Debussy's Clair de Lune doesn't become easier to play. We get better at finding the right keys.

Stressful situations don't become less stressful; we become better at seeing past our reactions to them.

The list goes on. Every success results from internalizing desire and strategy so that in decisive moments we can act without intending to [insert Nike slogan].

Every stage of life demands from us mastery over different aspects.

At times, we must work to master our bodies, whether to learn a new method or organize a neglected body.

Sometimes we need to change our immediate environments. Our physical ceilings can become metaphorical ones.

Other times, we need to master our minds. Playing slave to the whims of an emotional ego is self-destruction.

All pain and suffering point to a missing mastery. The more intense the pain, the more immediately we need a solution.

I believe all people deeply crave the process of mastering any craft, talent, or otherwise dynamic activity. When you ask a kid what they want to be when they grow up, "I don't know" is a more common answer than "nothing." The only difference when asking adults the same question is that many don't think beyond necessities.

Most of the time - when someone says they want happiness, they really mean that they don't want pain. They're not trying to get anywhere or do anything. They're trying to avoid unpleasantness, be it debt, loneliness, insecurity, food allergies - whatever.

Managing our immediate environment lessens (but doesn't eliminate) existential pain. Everything after food, water, and shelter is a subtle mastery, but the craving is always there.

Money makes us comfortable, but it won't make us happy because money only buffers the unpleasantness on one side of life while offering nothing to strive for on the other. It frees us from running away, but it doesn't (in and of itself) motivate anyone to run TO something. Mastery is exclusively the striving for a specific future.

To strive implies knowing what we want, so meaning is only a problem for those free enough to decide what's important. Mastery is the path of realization as it's only in the depths of purposeful activity that what matters in life comes front and center.

Mastery adds a dimension of meaning to life because mastery is both the goal and the process. I wake up excited to write, not because it doesn't feel like work, but because there's no other work I find to be more worth doing. The activity gives me both extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction. A term you may be more familiar with for this feeling is flow.

We now come to the question of "how."

Detached optimism

There's structure, and there's application. The systems of mastery are abstract. The application of it is as concrete as the present moment. We come to a flow state by recognizing the process and getting the ruminating self out of the way. Then, the organism is free to engage fully in the experience of Now.

Total absorption in the present moment is meditation, no matter how you get there. There's no other "how" to meditation - there's nothing you need to master first. Here and now is the closest we can get to the bottom turtle* (The infinite regress of self: the "who" we think is thinking.)

In this state, we don't need a distinction between the structure of our being and its application. Having been built on stable foundations through mastery, the structure lends itself to enhance one's application. In the same way, tomato plants crawl up a trellis installed long before they need its support.

Unlike tomatoes, we have expectations. No matter how dark it is, a plant knows, "if I climb higher, I get more sun." It's humans that wonder, "Is there more sun above the trees?" We assume uncertainty, and these unfounded expectations of the future keep us from dissolving into masterful activity at any given moment.

If you love beer league hockey every week, are you there to win or to have fun? Obviously both, but there's no pressure to "achieve" either. There are no expectations of what will or won't happen, which makes the process of packing a bag, getting there, and playing frictionless. 

That ease is telling. There's no undue pressure, only process. Time spent intentionally like this is the quickest way to develop any mastery you need. Expectations of sunlight just over this branch only get our way.

Detaching from any expectations of a return transforms the process into its own reward. Mastery is intrinsically valuable, whether engaging in what you deem worthwhile, figuring out what that is, or avoiding what you know isn't. So, time invested in mastery always returns a profit and recognizing this makes detached optimism a natural vibe in every exercise.

And yet, unless the activity is immediately pleasurable, there's resistance to intrinsically valuable activities because a payoff beyond the action takes time. The final point of "now I'm good at this" always feels far off and uncertain.

There's a conflict of interest here. We're inclined to favour little effort and guaranteed results over lots of action and uncertain outcomes. But everything we'd say is worth doing is only viewed as such because it demands an upfront cost with no guarantee of mastery beyond the basics.

We're afraid of "wasting" time on a process with no end, so instead, we waste the same time on anything that offers definitive returns, even if that makes next year worse! That's why everyone wants to master something, but practically no one does. It takes unreasonable obsession to pass up one marshmallow now in the hopes of 1000 marshmallows next year [1].

And this doesn't apply solely to a craft. Mastery of the body-mind affects every detail and pattern of life.

Most problems in this century aren't the need for quick reflexes (though practicing helps) but relationships between ideas. Emotional attachment to all of those ideas inevitably leads to turmoil. We're (un)consciously driven to harmonize our reality, and (frankly,) settling for the most accessible "yes" covers the problem for a day or two.

Mastery in the skill tree of life dodges the turmoil by relating to the relationships with a detached optimism. This clarifies the narrative that we've told ourselves we wanted. We're reminding ourselves of the trellis we've built.

The good feelings of a worthwhile activity are the most attractive variables for inspecting and altering our beliefs. I've found for myself that exercising and writing will always - undeniably and without exception - feel rewarding, no matter how much of a slog it is to get started.

But it's the expectations of an uncertain future that block the dissolution of self into masterful activity at any given moment. Changing the belief from "I have to do this" to "it's always rewarding" is responsible for more positivity than I could ever bring about by disciplining myself out of the first marshmallow.

We do it for the journey, not the destination. There's an eye on the hallucination of an end up to keep us on track, but if we disagree with the process, we'll only grow to resent both it and our desired outcome.

I move at my own pace not because success is guaranteed but because failure is. No effort - no result, no matter the metric you use. I do my best to do the right thing because the uncertainty of success is preferable to the certainty of failure if I don't.

I know where I am; I know where I want to be: I know how to get there. Filling in those blanks for yourself makes life a minefield of synchronicity and opportunity - the best way I know to describe a blissful life.

Yes, deriving pleasure from listening to wind blow through the leaves is a part of it, but the phenomenon of experiencing bliss in the simplest of moments is a function of how one gets to that moment.

Synchronicity and opportunity

Moments of total reverence for life do come by on their own every once in a while, both inevitably and unexpectedly. Usually we associate bliss with those occasions of a high.

No matter what you're looking for, opportunity is everywhere. The world needs more happy people because they are more likely to give their gifts back to the world. We can make virtuous feedback loops with the world around us. We just need to become the versions of ourselves that are open and ready for the right opportunity. The results you can deliver scale exponentially relative to mastery, so there's never really a ceiling to one's growth.

Moments of synchronicity thrive in cultivated, fertile mental and physical worlds. A conducive place to spark moments of connection with ourselves, others, and the "Everything" that everything undeniably is. The universe can line up for you even stuck watching TikTok at a job you don't like, but might we notice them as often? We can't foresee, anticipate, or predict these events, so we don't always have a heads up to look in the right direction.

Still, by following our interests towards their mastery, we inevitably encounter other people who join, guide or follow us along the path. It's mere cause and effect. Strangers are less likely to meet if either isn't present for the chance meeting.

Frankly, the details of spontaneity can change, and the life that follows will still make complete sense in hindsight, so who's to say what should or shouldn't be for anyone but themself.

Naturally, the greatest freedom is to choose what stimuli we allow to imprint on our consciousness. We prepare ourselves for those perfect moments by filtering out the inputs that don't resonate with us – that we intuitively feel won't lead us pleasurably further – and instead curiously following whatever it is that makes us feel something.

You don't need to do anything extra beyond what you already want to do, no matter what that "it" is.

Excited by an idea? Do! Curious? Try! The Javascript textbook (basic software development) is surprisingly easy to read. Do anything that aligns with a prosperous value inherent to being alive. Then, research and take the logical steps that lead from here and now to your state of flow.


Sometimes too far down one path, you may find out that a process won't always align with how you're willing and able to practice. But there's a process that more or less clicks with how we're ready and able to give back from ourselves in symbiotic harmony with the environment.

Sorting through the things we don't know that we don't know takes time. Knowing what you know is more valuable than you believe. Nothing is a waste of time when we act from a spontaneous curiosity.


Everything can either be a step in the right direction or an effort away from the wrong one without us having to make it so more than once. But you have to do something – at least the little things because you'll be waiting forever if you're still hanging on to the hope that the perfectly balanced and peaceful life will just happen without the intentional presence and performance of specific information.

Pursuing the appropriate mastery for one's life with detached optimism is how we set ourselves up to be at the right place and the right time to meet the right part of the world outside our anticipations of the general state of our lives.


It's easy to forget that life works itself out into patterns we can never predict because we're never magically "there." The finish line is actually a process. We can't make fruit on the tree grow any faster, but by preparing to catch the fruit instead of cursing time itself, it doesn't fall off the branch and go splat on the ground.


Show yourself you're willing to do what you have to do to live the life you want. Repetition invites inevitable results.

We have to change our inputs on physiological, conceptual, and emotional scales to plant the seeds of success. When we organize our lives on any level in the ways that align with our values, those moments show up more often (or at least it feels that way; is there a difference?).

Maybe it's just me, but it feels impossible not to come across exciting and rewarding coordination when I'm sufficiently prepared. So do something worthwhile today, no matter what life demands of you now.

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