How to Find a Prince (or two)

The word 'Serendipity' was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole (1717 – 1797), the 4th Earl of Oxford. A man of the arts; Walpole was a writer, art historian, antiquarian, Whig politician and designer of the famous Gothic Revival Strawberry Hill House in SW London. Mirroring the style of his home, many of his novels are Gothic fairy tales that revolve around castles, kings, fantastical myths and moral tales. It was his short story, ‘The Three Princes of Serendip,’ where the word originated. The princes in the story hail from the fictitious country of Serendippo, in the Far East. The king of Serendippo sends his three sons out into the world so that they can learn by experience. They go on to have many adventures in which they ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.’

With its royal sentiments, this origin tale has an interesting correlation to my own recent story of serendipity. Over the past month, I have been furiously working with many stakeholders to inform the process of the move of our School to a new campus. The title of these meetings are: “PUG” (short for Planning User Group) and a few weeks ago my calendar became inundated with PUGs. After one particularly long week involving a Friday afternoon School of Design PUG catch up after a week of PUG meetings; I decided to switch off by scrolling online ads for puppies with my son – an activity that is more of a hypothetical ‘what if’ scenario than something I actually wanted to action. On the many occasions we have done this previously it’s always framed around talking about the puppies for sale on Gumtree and saying ‘oh how cutttee!!’ but ultimately never committing to getting any. However on this particular Friday evening we came across the photo of two adorable, fully grown (and slightly overweight) pugs lounging on a sofa. My little boy and I mused about how we could adopt these super cute ‘dumplings’ and then showed the photo to my husband. He is normally the person that keeps our ‘puppy fantasies’ in check but on this occasion, he said “well they aren’t actually puppies and if we can get the pair of them then they will keep each other company – so less work for us.” That was all the justification I needed to contact the person that posted the ad to see if we could visit them. She wrote back immediately and said we could see them that Sunday. Needless to say, we ended up adopting them after one look into their adorable wrinkled faces and we are now officially pug owners. Pug ownership has opened a new world of #puglife in which I now see pugs and their owners everywhere. In an interesting nod to the above story on the origins of Serendipity - after linking in to a Facebook group on pugs I discovered that pugs were bred by the Chinese court to be royal companions. Their facial wrinkles are purposely engineered to resemble the Chinese character for Prince (王).?

The moral of Walpole’s story was that whenever you go out into the world and fit new things into your life; be it people, places, pets or new spaces; there is always something unexpectedly wonderful we can find in these experiences. As sometimes exasperating as these meetings can be – I have certainly had wonderful moments working with colleagues in the PUG crew. And although my pugs have urinated on many things I wish they hadn’t in the process of settling into our home – it’s such a joy to come home and see those wrinkly faces. Take every moment and experience as it comes with an open mind for you never know when you might just find something brilliant in the places you least expect.