Is This Serendipity?

Have you ever noticed how some words are used with a meaning that is not exactly its definition? I know a few. One that is very commonly used in entrepreneurial circles is “consistency”. Before seeing it being used every day in the sense of “persistence“, I thought of consistency as to how the cookie batter feels with more or less milk, or more or less flour. Or as used with systems and databases, where data has to be “consistent” for the data processing to work correctly.

Now, what is serendipity? According to the dictionary, it is:
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Let’s take a closer look at this definition. Especially the part where it says, “by chance”…

Recently, I took a few days off and went to Florida with my son to visit family (no, it wasn’t Disney, at least not this time). I have been on a quest to find more about myself. My personal growth journey started way back, but lately, it has taken a front seat more than ever. Well, during this week, my son made friends with an older man in the pool. Turns out he was a war veteran and a hypnotherapist. We ended up having the most interesting conversations about spiritual development and what humans are meant to do in their lives. He gave me some great tips!

Is This Serendipity?

I didn’t think I was going to make friends, let alone meet a person who turned out to be of valuable guidance on my path. To me, that’s serendipity. Yes, it was “by chance”. But was it? It was not by chance I met someone who had something I needed to learn at that exact moment… For some reason, there we were, and my son happened to start a conversation with him. I had been searching for this type of knowledge.

I believe that serendipitous moments occur in our lives when we are already paying attention to notice them coming. If you are not looking at the floor, you probably won’t notice that fifty-dollar bill someone dropped by chance.

Many inventions in modern life happened due to accidents, or what some people called serendipity. The microwave oven, smoke detectors, artificial sweeteners, and others fall under this category. But were they really accidents? Or were the inventors already looking for something – except they didn’t know what it was until they found it? If they hadn’t been searching, would they have identified it when they found them? My father had a saying that went like this: “if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you won’t identify it when you find it”.

Can We Make it Happen?

According to this New York Times article, you can cultivate serendipity. It says scientist Sanda Erdelez, who studied this subject for decades, believes it is possible to practice serendipity. She found in her research that the people who had more serendipity in their lives simply gave themselves more opportunities to encounter things that will make you happy or benefit you in some way. These people also believed they would encounter these things, even thought they didn’t know what they were.

This comes back to my concept of perception and focus. If you are never paying attention to what is going on around you, you probably won’t have many serendipitous moments.

The article goes on to explain that when people are open to learning and exploring, they are engaging in “a highly creative act”. That these findings were created by the people because of the decisions they made and how they noticed what came back to them. That this resulted in what they practiced. Wouldn’t you say this is starting to look more and more like we have more influence over serendipitous events?

Is Serendipity an Accident?

With all of that said, my verdict is this: serendipity is an “accident” sent by the universe to set us on the right path. And this is one of the things I and my hypnotist friend agreed on when chatting by the pool. We all came here to this life to learn our lessons to become better people. When we are open to these lessons, the universe will deliver. It will present opportunities in ways that sometimes will be unexpected or unconventional.

We will get a call from someone we haven’t spoken to in years. We will find a crucial piece of information coming from a place we never imagined would be relevant. Scientists will find out new drugs because they used the wrong substance during a procedure, “accidentally”. We will get fired from a job just to get a better opportunity shortly after. We will meet a friend by the side of a pool that will provide us with valuable information we could use to make progress in our lives. Is it just good luck? Random circumstance?

Improved Definition of Serendipity

“Events that happen by chance in a happy or beneficial way“, is a definition for those that don’t believe superior forces are giving us a hand out there. If you can’t prove it, you are better off saying it is by chance… and you may be one of those. No hard feelings. I used to be that person, too. Once you have seen your share of serendipity and coincidences, though, you may start thinking differently. That is, if you are open and curious about learning new perspectives.

There are no coincidences. We can surely set our goals and start following our dreams, but we can’t do it all by ourselves without help. Serendipity will be there to give us what we need at the right moment. But we will need to have started the movement of searching, and being open to accept and receive. Then, it’s when the magic will happen. Then, we could instead boldly say that Serendipity is:

the occurrence and development of events by greater forces of the universe to benefit those who are ready to receive them

Did you ever have an interesting serendipitous moment in your life? Tell us about it, I’d love it if you could share it in the comments.