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Walking on a trail along the fields near my home, I clicked some pictures of the reeds and wild flowers that sprout in the winter months. Nature’s variety seems boundless. Who knows how many kinds of flowers and plants there are in the world. How Nature creates such bounty, beauty and functionality while eschewing superfluousness is an absolute wonder. Of course, none of it happened all at once. It usually takes thousands of years for evolution to erode the pointless and perpetuate the essential. But then, Nature is never in a hurry. After all, it has a lot of time and space. (Yes, this is my idea of a Physics joke!) Simplicity has a ring of truth about it, an elegance and resilience that beats trends and momentary peaks and troughs. If you’ve ever seen a belt of sand dunes, you know what I mean. Functionally, it’s just piles of sand shaped into crescents by the wind and yet, one can keep looking at them, mesmerised. The same is true for sitting on a beach and watching the waves roll in and recede, and then do more of the same. Perhaps, this applies to our lives as well. Yes, we live in consumerist times and there are unending mounds of stuff everywhere we look. And yet, the call of the classic and understated is eternal and cuts through the clutter. I’m reminded of two photographs that were in the news a few years ago. One was a picture of a meeting between the Emperor of Japan and the Saudi Crown Prince in September of 2016 while the other was from the Saudi King’s visit to Japan a few months later. The coverage of the Saudi King’s visit was overrun by headlines of golden escalators, silk carpets and luxury cars. In contrast, the Japanese Emperor met with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in a room with screen walls, two wooden chairs and a small table with a flower arrangement. Even though the visits took place months apart, my mind has collated them into a single conversation of ideals and highlighted the distinctly Japanese trait of winning an argument by speaking the softest. Wherein lies the appeal of simplicity? Is it only functionality and lack of embellishment that win us over? Or does simplicity strum a chord within us that longs to live unpretentiously with adequate belongings to make our lives easier but not smother our surroundings with everything ever invented. Clutter stresses us out, on a sub-conscious level. Which is why it feels good to live with less. Not everyone needs to or can be Marie Kondo , arguably the world’s most famous tidy-upper, but it’s helpful to recognise that acquiring possessions must have a cut-off point. After all, there are only so many mugs, rugs, clothes or vases that a person needs. This is something I like to remind myself as well. A few years ago, when I moved out of Delhi to our farm in Belgaum, I packed one large trunk of clothes I had never worn. Most still had their tags peeping out of the bags they came in. It shocked me and I was ashamed of my hoarding ways. I’m working on correcting that by cutting down my purchases and discarding before I buy. Which is why I find the story about the Zen monk who welcomed a traveller into his dwelling is so impactful. The Zen monk had only a sleeping mat and a few wooden pots in his room. His visitor asked why he didn’t have any furniture. To which the monk said, “Where is your furniture?” Taken aback, his guest responded, “I don’t have any furniture. I’m only passing through.” The monk smiled and said, “So am I.” Travel light – that’s the message. And that doesn’t mean giving up on aesthetics. Instead, one can focus more on quality if the pressure to collect quantity is deducted from the equation. The one and only Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” He absolutely hit the nail on the head with that. Except that he too had trunkfuls of clothes, given his dandy ways. Aah well… so da Vinci wasn’t perfect, but at least he was working on it! So can we.

In January 2013, I visited Chennai on a professional assignment with a few team members. One day, we had the morning to ourselves. A colleague asked me to accompany him to buy a saree for his wife. Amongst the ones we saw was a muted gold silk saree with a rhomboid weave of golden and silver thread. My colleague considered purchasing it but eventually preferred another. That night, I spoke to a friend who told me about a dream he had the preceding night. He lived in the US and so his night was my day. He’d dreamt of walls covered in wallpaper made of silk. And it was the colour of muted gold, covered in rhombi. Taken aback, I told him about having seen a saree that morning, very similar to what he described. We laughed it off but the incident has stayed with me. Over the years, I wondered if it had been a synchronicit y Even prior to that incident, I’d often wondered about the kinds of happenstance that, in my case, revolved around pieces of information, books and people. Sometimes, I’d be thinking about an idea and would find a book about the same concept the next time I popped into a bookstore. Or would meet and get to know people who engaged my curiosity in a particular direction. To me, these signs were answers to questions I wasn’t asking aloud. In fact, sometimes, I wasn’t even asking them. At least, not consciously. Most of these instances don’t stand out and could be brushed aside as coincidences. Though in hindsight, their meaning is easier to spot because the paths they opened up and the places they led to became apparent. I refer to this as Synchronicity now because Signs from the Universe (which is what I called such occurrences earlier) makes me sound flakier than a croissant and paints the Universe in a most unflattering light - as if it doesn’t have better things to do than to send me signals! Also, I learnt that this wasn’t something that I alone had noticed. Synchronicity as a theory was propounded by Carl Gustav Jung , a pioneer of analytical psychology. He expanded the scope of his theory by working with physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli . They described synchronicity as circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection. In other words,  synchronicity states that some events are meaningfully related not by cause and effect, but by some other principle. Quite often, external events in our lives resonate with our internal psychological and emotional states. Which does not happen in case of simple coincidences. Also, synchronicities often appear in times of emotional intensity or when we are faced with a choice. There are times when ideas or people cross our path as if the universe put them there – in a response to our need. One of the most famous instances of a synchronicity is the story of the golden scarab. Jung wrote about it in his book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle . His patient was a well-educated young woman whose concept of reality was strictly rational and geometrical. As a result, Jung had found her psychologically inaccessible. He wrote, “ Well, I was sitting opposite her one day with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She’d had an impressive dream the night before in which someone had given her a golden scarab – a costly piece of jewellery. While she was telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned around and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window pane from outside in the effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeoid beetle whose gold green colour resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, ‘There is your scarab’. This experience punctuated the desired hole in her rationalism and broke the ice of her intellectual resistance.” Sometimes, the breakthrough or synchronicity is stunningly memorable as in this case. At other times, it could be gentler. And the significance of those signs is also deeply personal because each of us carries in our minds, entire galaxies of meaning. For instance, curls of pencil shavings may be a core memory from your childhood. And so, only you would appreciate the significance of unexplained pencil shavings scattered on a window sill in an otherwise pristine house shown to you by a realtor. In explaining his theory, Jung didn’t hold back from using the language of Physics (with help from Pauli, of course), though he did stop shy of using the term “Big Bang”. Carl Jung spoke about how “under certain conditions space and time can be reduced to almost zero, causality disappears along with them because causality is bound up with the existence of space and time and physical changes, and consists essentially in the succession of cause and effect. For this reason, synchronistic phenomena cannot in principle be associated with any conceptions of causality.” While researching this post, I came across another astounding tale of synchronicity. In the early 1970s, the actor, Anthony Hopkins was starting out in the movies and was cast in The Girl from Petrovka , a film based on a novel (with the same name) by George Feifer. As preparation for his role, Hopkins decided to read the novel. He walked around London checking every bookstore. Unfortunately, not a single copy was available. Disappointed, he took the subway back home. On the train, he spotted an object left behind by someone. It was a copy of The Girl from Petrovka. This is a pretty amazing story but it gets better. At some point during the making of the movie, George Feifer, the author of the book, came to the set. While chatting with Hopkins, Feifer mentioned that he’d lent his copy of The Girl from Petrovka  to a friend who had left it on a train. Utterly surprised, Hopkins pulled out his book and showed it to the author. Feifer exclaimed, “That’s my copy.” That’s synchronicity for you. A coincidence so striking, meaningful and utterly impossible to orchestrate that it exceeds all possible explanations. Perhaps what comes to us as new information in this lifetime has been explored in another lifetime. Is it possible that synchronicities are nodes on the branches of lifetimes on the tree of destiny? A synchronicity may appear in the form of dreams, symbols, numbers, conversations, spontaneous encounters and ‘trickster’ events. Trickster events are those which initially have a negative effect but reveal a positive impact in the long run. Like missing a flight only to meet someone on the next flight who works at a company you’re applying to for a job. Or walking into a music store because the friend you are meeting for a drink is delayed. And you end up enrolling in piano lessons every Thursday, and realise after a few months of lessons that music comes naturally to you. In the words of J Mike Fields, “Synchronicities are the doors to the wisdom of a thousand lifetimes waiting for integration.” I know all of this may sound a bit unbelievable. I’ll understand if you think I’ve lost my marbles. That’s fine. I do have a suggestion though. Just to strengthen your assertion, look back upon your life. Who knows? You might spot a synchronicity hiding in plain sight in the guise of the merely coincidental. Or perhaps, you’ll uncover a curiosity for coincidence and its serendipitous sibling, synchronicity. You may choose to explore it further to learn the various types of synchronicities and their links to quantum physics, the concept of karma and past lives. Would this blog post then count as a sign for you from the Universe?

What was the last thing you purchased? A pack of gum, a t-shirt or half a dozen apples? How much did you pay for it?  If you remember the amount you paid, there’s a good chance you paid in cash. Why is that so? You’ll know the answer by the end of this post. MY PAY PALS I don’t use a credit card. Never have. Does that impact my credit score adversely? Perhaps, but that’s a conversation for another time or the comment section. The reason I’ve never wanted a credit card, despite being offered many over the years, is because credit cards allow you to spend money you don’t have . I abhor the idea of buying stuff on credit. I know I sound financially illiterate and more than a little old-fashioned but please bear with me. While I do use debit cards, I’ve never stopped using good old cash. In India, we’re currently going through a period of looking down at cash in favour of digital payments for even small purchases like a glass of lemonade. I see the value of not having to dive into my wallet and waiting for change, but I believe that using credit or debit cards and digital wallets like Amazon Pay leave a far greater dent on your savings than using cash. There’s something about pulling out your wallet, fishing out the right amount, counting it, handing it over and waiting for change that has a far greater psychological impact on us than merely scanning a QR code, punching in the amount and tapping a button. This psychological impact is called the “pain of paying”. THE PAIN OF PAYING The term “pain of paying” is based on the feeling of displeasure caused by paying for our purchases. Studies using neuro-imaging and MRIs show that paying stimulates the same parts of the brain that process actual physical pain. I dare say I could’ve told you that without the MRI! You might think that this pain of paying applies only to expensive things. Nope. Any price will do. It’s not as much about the price as it is about giving up something we possess. Money, in this case. One needs to buy stuff with money since love and fresh air aren’t the best modes for barter! But if they were, we’d be loath to part with them too. PICK YOUR PAIN: CASH OR CARD? What we do get to choose is our form of payment. The trouble with using cash is that first, you need to have some in your account. Then there’s the inconvenience of withdrawing it and finally, the annoyance of pulling out your wallet, counting it and waiting for change. In contrast, a single swipe of your credit or debit card or scanning a QR code on your cell phone frees you from these hassles. But it’s not all hunky-dory. Cards and digital payment apps are just means for us to avoid pain in the present, often levying an even higher cost in the future. And I’m not referring to their sky-high interest rates. SPENDING MADE SMOOTHER Consider this. Making payments has become easier and easier over the last three decades. Why do you think that has happened? To make things easier for the customer? Or is to banish all bends in the road that result in a customer giving sober thought to whether or not, they really need a particular item? And weighing the benefits of acquiring their new purchase against the disadvantages of parting with their hard-earned money? The folks in expensive business suits call it the ease of spending, emphasizing the smoothness of the experience. Or is that just a euphemism for a slippery slope? While cards and digital payment apps provide convenience, some cash-backs and discounts to their users, they also share data of our spending habits with businesses which, in turn, use that information for targeted advertising. Digital payment apps and cards make us unmindful of the prices of the stuff we buy and its ultimate utility and value in our lives. That’s why I asked you about the last thing you purchased and its price. SHOP NOW, PAY LATER Another major psychological advantage credit cards have over other forms of payment is that they separate the time   that we consume goods or services from the time that we pay for them. They reduce my current pain of paying because my mind doesn’t register the tapping of a credit card as handing over money. If I pay 160 rupees in cash for an iced coffee, I pay for it roughly around the same time as I consume it. And I feel the pinch of my over-priced coffee. If I put it on a credit card, I pay for it more than a month later. However, at the time that I’m sipping my coffee, it feels almost free. And when I do pay for it, I will never truly register the cost of this over-priced iced drink because it will be clubbed along with a car servicing invoice, my monthly Netflix subscription and grocery bills. FUTURE PERFECT There’s another thing most of us do. At least the optimists. We usually imagine we will have more money in the future than we do in the present, even if the future is only 45 days away. And so, we happily ring up the expense in the present. By minimizing the pain of paying, credit cards create an air of detachment that makes us more willing to spend. On the other hand, paying with cash has in-built salience. THE ROLE OF SALIENCE Salience is a grown-up term for being aware of something. Cheques are slightly less salient than cash but we still have to write out the sum and hand it over. It registers in our mind as a loss when we hand over a cheque. Credit cards have even lesser salience – just a swipe or tap (please note how nowadays, we don’t even need to hand over the card). We often barely even notice the amount. Digital payments top even this. Point and tap. You barely need a pulse to pay! So, the next time you think about economising, switch to cash. It may be an enriching experience. In more ways than one!