Serendipity

Serendipity

A simply marvelous word, just by the sound of it alone. It lulls you into thoughts of wonder, excitement, fun, happiness, it's just a joyful sounding word. To say it, well, it rolls off the tongue forming a smile, maybe even makes your feet skip, ..., if you let them that is.

So about a month ago someone near and dear to me used this word in a conversation and honestly, beyond how I described it above, I couldn't place a definition to it, so I looked it up:

In general, serendipity is the act of finding something valuable or delightful when you are not looking for it. Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

The term was coined by English writer Horace Walpole on January 28, 1754, in a letter written to Horace Mann. He credited it to a "silly fairy tale" he once read called 'The Three Princes of Serendip'.

According to the fairy tale, three Persian princes sailed off to make their fortunes in the "land of silk", an island called Serendip . (Today, the island is known as Sri Lanka.) Along the way, the princes made all types of wondrous and delightful discoveries about the island, and learned things they never expected.

The term is also sometimes used to mean "the randomness of fate," or fortuitous happenstance.
In the science world, cause, well, this is me at my very essence, Serendipity is responsible for many discoveries, in fact many of mankinds best, the stuff while trying to do or find or be something else:

Low density polyethylene, Silly Putty, Teflon, Superglue, Polycarbonates, Penicillin, Bioelectricity, discover of Uranus, Infrared radiation, X rays, Electromagnetism, Vulcanization of rubber, Safety glass, Corn flakes/wheat flakes, the microwave oven, Pyroceramics and The Slinky, just to name a few of the inventions or discoveries made serendipitously.

I like to think of Serendipity as what happens on the road of life when you least expect it, it's perhaps what happens when your plans go astray, opening a window into a galaxy you never even knew existed but was right there before your eyes. Serendipity brings happiness and potentially a new found wealth of joy, maybe when you already have great happiness or when you never thought you could see beyond the darkness that life can be at times.

Serendipity is the kinder, gentler, Hand of Fate.

When I think of Serendipity I think of a photo I once took to honor my Nana long before she died. It was one of the last trips I was lucky enough to spend with her on Sanibel Island, God I loved that place and I haven't been back since our last trip together there. I was snapping sunset after sunset, looking for just the right one, with visions in my head of having it enlarged and framed for her for Christmas, this was decades before digital photos, you know, when you didn't know what you had till the moment was long gone. When the picture was developed it was the most beautiful picture I'd ever taken, the ocean and beach deep awash in a sunset of ambers, browns, yellows and oranges, but there it was, a bird, in full flight, centered right over the sunset. It was a beautiful surprise, it was as I realize now, Serendipity.

That photo now hangs in my living room, I see it every day and I think of happiness, of my Nana, of one of my favorite places on earth, the edge of the ocean awash in color and I think of how fate brought that bird my way at just the right moment.

And that brings me to the bird of fate, you could say.

At times like this in my mind, life, as complicated and dark as it can be, is never clearer, never brighter or warmer. I think that bird of fate called Serendipity is sitting on my shoulder just chirping away to those who will listen closely and not miss one note of it's tune about life, love and happiness, that can, in the right circumstances, happen to those who least expect it, but most deserve it.