S E R E N D I P I T Y ; The Light in the Shadows.

“How do any of us know where the strands of our lives are interwoven?”

―Most things are never meant. I have often seen this about Life…that when a door closes on you, when people reject you, when what you desperately want does not come to you despite your best efforts and prayers…all this happens only because you are meant to be walking through a different door, you are meant to be meeting other people and only because it is ordained that you receive something else, which you have not even imagined…that which is truly meant for you. That's why you don’t need to grieve when you don’t get what you want; what you want is immaterial…What Life believes you need is what you eventually, always, get! People, places, events – they have a way of curiously being arranged for you, for a reason. And you often can and will find that reason only in hindsight. Sometimes they are more evident, sometimes they happen in a paradoxical way – which is, you may not want something but what’s happening is Life’s way of getting you to where you must arrive, of making you who you must be.

Destiny is surely propelled by desires. Desires push and pull you to make big moves and landslide changes, but they don’t propel you to the people who will help shape those desires. The street directions of our life’s path are difficult to read. They aren’t intuitive... they’re the product of the minutiae of our daily lives: accidental meetings and chances that happen while you’re getting fed or finding shelter. And on the road, that means the influence of complete strangers. But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together - one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad - every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness - resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential. The coincidences or little miracles that happen every day of your life are hints that the universe has much bigger plans for you than you ever dreamed of for yourself.

Focus on anticipating what serendipity if bringing... because it's the past, present, and future colliding. Serendipity. The ability to see opportunity when it slaps you in the face and smart enough not to turn the other cheek. When seasoned by the subtleties of accident, harmony, favor, wisdom, and inevitability, luck takes on the cast of serendipity. Serendipity happens when a well-trained mind looking for one things encounters something else: the unexpected. Success is three parts hard work and one part serendipity; this serendipity is a direct result of the other three parts of hard work. There is always another layer of awareness, understanding, and delight to be discovered through synchronistic and serendipitous events. There's that day when you realize that everything that happened before that one person found you, probably happened to prepare you and to prepare everything, for that person's arrival. It's not that everything suddenly "makes sense" but it's more that you understand why this didn't work and that didn't work and you fell into this ditch and you broke a certain bone somewhere. It's so they'd find you. Or so that you'd find them. So you'd find each other.

One mystery of life is that every human relationship begins with a coincidence. Even the most fundamental relationship - that of parent and child - begins entirely with a coincidence. The child is produced by whatever serendipity brought its parents together, and the fact that the child was born to its particular parents instead of to another couple is pure happenstance. Thus, children have no choice over the relationship that is most important to their existence. By contrast, friends and lovers choose each other, but even these choices are reactions to whatever random coincidence made the resulting relationship possible.

Life really sucks. It’s all random bullshit that adds up to nothing but chaos. But serendipity: accidentally finding something wonderful while not looking for it. A few get lucky. The rest of us fight for what’s left over. One thing I've found... the road rarely rises up to meet you until you've begun walking and hard work increases the probability of serendipity. If you miss what seems so glamorous; if you miss what seems so fantastic to have, don't worry. It may be just a matter of fantasy to have it. Real things are rare but real to have. serendipity and the vicissitudes of life determine what is real, ideal and what is a fantasy. The real future is uncertain to all.

"Serendipity": Such a beautiful word describing the occurrence of events by chance. I like to think it’s the energy you put out into the world returning your energy with love. Cultivate the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. Nothing in life is a foregone conclusion unless and until it is foregone and concluded.

Serendipity will take you beyond the currents of what is familiar. Invite it. Watch for it. Allow it.