Serendipity

 

Dictionary.com defines serendipity as this: "noun,plural ser·en·dip·i·ties. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident"  Most people say that it's a series of happy events that lead to an unexpected, but desirable outcome.  But, as I've become more observant of the events taking place in my life, I don't agree with that.  I think that sometimes events, good or bad, take place to prevent something bad, or to give you something good.

On Thursday, my husband and I drove down to Espanola to get more conduit for our plumbing project.  We were also supposed to get 2ft rebar.  I managed to forget the rebar, which meant we either needed to drive back down to Espanola, or get the local hardware store to cut 2 long bars in half, but, the next day, we were supposed to meet a friend for lunch.  Friday morning, he had something come up, and had to cancel.  We decided to drive to Questa, get the longer rebar cut in half and take it to the property and if the weather was nice, finish staking out our lines we needed.  Well, we got to the property, and discovered that due to the planned power outage early Thursday morning, our AC for the shed had kicked in and was running.  The problem was, it wasn't in the window and was venting the hot air into the shed.  It was easily 95 in there when we first opened the door and getting hotter. The fact that it was venting the hot air into the shed, meant that it was still trying to churn out hot air to cool down the shed.

How is that serendipitous you ask?  Well, if I hadn't forgotten the rebar, and my friend hadn't cancelled, we wouldn't have gone out the property that day, and our shed would have burned down.  There is no maybe about it.  It would have burned, and that would've been the end of all our hard work out there. So, through a series of negative "coincidences," we saved our shed.  So yes, by that definition, it was indeed serendipity that kept our shed from burning down, which is a positive outcome.

Personally, I think that one of the reasons people don't think that serendipitous events ever happen to them, is because they narrow their view to the definition given above.  Those events leading to the positive outcome don't always have to be positive, as was in the case for me.  And in the case for those people who got caught in traffic, or were running late somehow, and didn't end up in the twin towers when they were hit.  Yes, that event was quite tragic, but the fact that those people didn't lose their lives because of a negative event prior to that, is a positive event, and in my opinion, a type of serendipity.  And, since I've been viewing serendipity in a broader light, I'm seeing these types of events more and more, not just for me, but in others as well.  It really does happen all the time, we just don't know to look for it because the definition we've been given is so limited.  

I think I really started to notice it more after my gratitude challenge taught me to look at negative things in a positive light.  I really started to notice that sometimes, those negative things are really setting us up for a bigger positive thing.  And understanding that, allowed me to see how those things are connected.

I'd love to know what other thoughts and experiences people have regarding this.