Carl Jung defined the concept of synchronicity when trying to explain the inexplicable the experience of having two (or more) things happen coincidentally in a manner that is meaningful to the person or persons experiencing them, where that meaning suggests an underlying pattern. When you finish sentences for someone, where you sense them, where you are in tune with them.

Yes, she is beautiful and magical, and the extraordinary person she is is just so captivating for me. But there is a greater feeling that fascinates me about us that which Jung tried so hard to define. Its easy to put labels and tags on things, to try to break them down in their constituent parts to see how they run. It almost always succeeds in destroying the magic of the situation and fails to get us any closer to understanding these mysterious times.

She is in pain tonight. I knew before she told me, and I just don’t know why. But I also know how she is feeling right now as I’m feeling it too. And that is what I find fascinating above all. She and I have never met, we’ve never been within a mile of each other, but geography is irrelevant as I sense her. She wrote that she sensed me when I went to see her, and I know she did. I don’t know her like her friends or family do, nor will I ever know everything. I have no idea what goes on day to day in her life other than what she chooses to share with me. But I sense her.

How is that possible? Is it just melodramatic and implausible? Maybe its just knowing someone or picking up on the generic signs everyone else gives. It can be dangerous to overstate things and delve into the fantastical. It can be easy to exaggerate and believe that what is not the truth but an extension of your own desires and fantasies. But I don’t feel that, and neither does she. But there is a connection I cant explain. I feel stupid for saying it, like I’m believing what I want to believe. But she feels it too. I’m no lovesick puppy. A spiritual junkie perhaps.

Finding that connection with someone is incredibly rare and precious. Many people spend the best part of their lives seeking it and missing it. Thousands of pages of romantic novels have been written about it and girls grow up in quiet despair that they haven’t found it yet. Thats what makes our situation so strange and powerful. Whatever happens, we’ve had a time in our lives when we bumped into someone who shared that moment with us, in mind and spirit. That in itself is something to treasure.

I can feel it in my chest and on my shoulders. She feels vulnerable, alone and like her usual layer of protective skin has been removed. Shes touch sensitive. Ive been there too. We all have. I’m hurting because she is. The world of the last few weeks has been a painful hurricane thats knocked her off balance and made so much feel so uncertain. I felt the same today, like I was unsure of my footing. I didn’t need reassurance; I just wasn’t sure if I had a foothold or was doing the right thing. The air always feels slightly cold and everything around you so fragile.

Ive seen my share of tragedy; in fact many might say that Ive seen some of the most horrific things imaginable. Ive seen men scream for their mothers as they burned to death in front of me in towers of car tyres soaked with petrol; ive watched a 14 year old boy kicked to death in front of me on the side of the road and a 5 year old drop down dead from malaria moments after thanking me for what I had taught him; Ive seen police officers deal the drugs they confiscated from someone they has just arrested; Ive seen friends committed to psychiatric wards in the midst of total psychotic breakdowns that left them tremoring and convulsing; Ive seen politicians you know from the TV pick up prostitutes in Westminster in their stately cars.

Ive been there when my girlfriend woke up screaming in terror from the trauma of being abused by her grandfather and gang-raped in school; Ive seen junkies inject themselves in places doctors wouldn’t dare; Ive seen more than 8 friends paralysed with grief from their fathers suicide and their descent into despair; Ive seen a man murdered by having his face destroyed by a broken glass bottle; Ive seen families paid off by businessmen to cover up their crimes and protect their charitable reputation; Ive looked 3 paedophiles in the face as they told me what they did to the children they abused and laughed at their trauma as if it were a sick game; Ive seen the knowing smiles on the faces of priests who have abused infants without being reported.

Ive seen the rotting bodies of children lying on the roadside after the genocide in Rwanda and the torture cells; Ive been beaten by police in cells in the middle of the night and listened to friends describe how they watched their parents gunned down like animals with AK-47 fire; Ive taken the beating for friends who were attacked by racists and denied their rights for what they believe by those in authority; Ive watched a homeless man saw through his own forearm bones as a begging tactic and seen more of them lying in their own vomit from drinking surgical spirit; Ive seen the blood on the knife of a psychopath who disembowelled someone on the street 5mins before, only after being out of prison for 5 days; Ive been there as friends watched the silhouette of their girlfriend fucking someone else and spitefully enjoying it.

I could go on, but my point is not to list all the evil Ive seen in my life. I don’t claim any kind of kudos from it. I never chose to be in any of these situations.

The point is that its all relative. No tears are worse than any other. No-one suffers less because what has happened to them is less severe than anyone else. Children in Africa don’t suffer from not having TVs, as they never had them in the first place. We only miss what weve had, not the things we imagine or want. To have something for a short while and lose it is considerably more painful than not to have had it at all. Its very easy to lose faith.

A lot of suffering is legitimate. Scott Peck claims all mental illness stems from the attempt to avoid it, and that healthy depression is a normal fact of life and comes about as the unconscious mind has already noticed that things have changed and the conscious mind hasn’t. Suffering produces wisdom and perseverance. Its a lot easier to wait if you know somethings on its way and what is happening. My own disease is clinical anxiety and depression, which is a major pathological disorder associated with chronic lack of the necessary neurotransmitters in the brain. It can cripple you if you let it, and feels like you’re wearing grey-tinted glasses. Some days the black overwhelms you, sometimes its a good day.

But above all these things, there is truth. The truth I know to be real is that good and evil cannot exist without the other. Day cannot exist without night. Without one we cannot appreciate or understand the other. Where there is pain, there will be joy. Where there is grief, there will be consolation. Where there are tears, there will be laughter. Where there is cruelty, there will be compassion. Where there is despair, there will be hope.

The world will sometimes be against you, and there will always be those that disagree with you. There will be friends and enemies in equal measure, those that you can trust and those that will betray. There will be sadness that makes the world seem like a place where there is no colour or happiness. Ive felt rage so extreme that Ive worried I wouldn’t survive it and joy that I cant express in words. There are days when the noise from the pain drowns out the wonder of whats around you. But there are no small things. The tiniest actions can have the most profound effect because we live interdependently with each other.

There is always hope. The sun will always rise and start the dawn chorus. You will laugh, you will smile and you will love again. The morning will always close the last chapter so it can start a new one. All of this will pass, just as it did before. The dark will surround you but you will break through it. You don’t have to fight, just don’t give up. I believe in you. I believe in you no matter what mistakes you’ve made, how terrible things look now and whether the world is about to collapse in and destroy everything you thought you knew. Ill be by your side so we face the horror together. Ill carry you when you’re tired and when you have no more energy to fight. When you fall there will be arms to catch you and keep you stable as you stumble.

I will cover you when you want the ground to swallow you up and hide you when you don’t want to be found. I will break down the doors of those that threaten you and brush the hair from your face when you want it to conceal you. There will be times when you feel anything anyone says will hurt you beyond all repair and you cant bear to be near anyone as you’ve already given everything you have. The air may be squeezed from your lungs by the weight on your chest and it will feel like nothing will ever change no matter how hard you try. All the faces and memories of the past may haunt you, but you will live through this because you were designed for it.

The cold has no resistance to warmth, and evil breaks apart in the face of love. Fear has no power over hope and can make no prisoner of what does not allow it to be its captor. Today will be the day when you decide how the rest of your life will be. The decision you make now will set the tone of the days to come. There is nothing you cannot do, only the fear that makes you believe you cant do it. The world is waiting for your smile to set fire to your soul so you shine through what is hurting you now.

There is someone who cares. There is someone who knows what you are going through and feels what you feel. There is someone who loves you even when you feel more alone than you think you have for a long time. There will always be more than one, even though you cant see them and theyre not here now. Right now is just the place where you are sitting at this very moment, but later you will be somewhere else, with someone else. Pain washes away like waves and ripples that slowly get less intense and further apart as time pushes them along. The reason you are here now is that you need to be here to be the person you are about to become.

I wrote this for a lot of people. I wrote it for my son, when he runs up to me and grabs my trouser leg. I wrote it for my sis, who has never had the peace of mind she deserves. I wrote it for me, for when the walls close in. But I also wrote it for everyone I care about and the people I havent met yet. I believe in every one of you.You and i will change the world. We already have.