Serendipity

Serendipity is a propensity for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated. The word has been voted one of the ten English words that are hardest to translate.

In college I took a creative writing class where I was required to write a paper about my favorite word, and I chose serendipity.  It’s always been one of my favorite words, and it’s quite true about it being hard to describe – it’s more a feeling than anything else.

Unfortunately for me, I was in college long before the Serendipity movie came out, so I couldn’t even draw from that for inspiration.  I was forced to write about my own personal experiences with it, and in some instances could only guess about the eventual outcome of those experiences.  {In retrospect, it’s a quite laughable piece of drivel that I was most fortunate to receive a passing grade for producing.}

The enchantment of serendipity, though, doesn’t really lie with the word itself, but with the concept.  It’s entwined with other romantic notions like fate and destiny, and generally presented to us in a very sparkly, alluring little package.  For a dreamer like me, the draw of serendipity is almost impossible to resist.

Yet over the years, I suppose that dreamy quality of mine has been tainted with a bit of cynicism.  I’ve been burned.  I’m no longer convinced that serendipity exists, and I wonder how often we find only exactly what we were looking for all along.  Isn’t it easier to chalk the course of our lives up to destiny, instead of believing that we determine our own lot in life? I wonder how many times we make a mark in the ‘fate’ column, when really it’s a cop-out that allows us to avoid making an actual decision.

Does putting stock in a concept like serendipity rob you of your own decision-making power?  Does it take away from our sovereign God, who knew the beginning and end of your story even before He created you?

Quote from the movie:  “Holding on to concepts like fate and destiny stops us from doing the real work.”

Serendipity.

Where do you stand?

What If

Mama Kat – who by the way, sort of rocks – does a Writer’s Workshop every week.  I almost always play along, though more often than not, I do not publish them.  Not here, anyway.

I have a tendency to pick the most difficult prompts.  The brutally honest, no-holds-barred kind that are hard for me to get out and even harder to let go of once I do.  It’s therapeutic to write, and I’ve done this as long as I can remember with no need to broadcast it to the world.

But sometimes – sometimes – I wonder what would happen if I did.  What if I really did put it all out there, warts and all?  What would people think?  Would those that love me, stop?  Would they think that they never really knew me at all?  Would they be relieved to know that someone else thinks the same way they do?

I hold myself back for two reasons.  First, because if my life were ‘Sense and Sensibility’, I’d rather be Elinor than Marianne.  I’ve been Marianne and gotten burned.  Better to keep a tight rein on your emotions, I believe.  And second, because I have a ‘fake it ’til you feel it’ policy that I apply to instances when I fear my natural instinct might lead me astray.  Sometimes faking the right thing helps me feel the right thing.  Sort of like plastering a smile on your face until you actually feel happy.

So if I stopped holding myself back, what I might be putting ‘out there’ could be too much.  Too revealing, too personal, too hurtful.

Today isn’t the day I stop holding back, just in case that’s what you were waiting for.  But I wanted to share with you the prompt that rocked me last week.

1.) Lou Holtz (don’t ask me who that is) once said, “life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” Do you believe this? Describe a time when you feel like you could have responded a different way and produced a different outcome.

Can you imagine the possibilities here? For 6 days now I have been considering the many directions my life could have taken, had I just done any one thing differently.

Every reaction, every decision, perhaps even every ‘avoidance of making a decision’ produces an outcome, so there are myriad opportunities for change.  One little choice that might have made all the difference in the world.

As a person who has always been intrigued by the concept of fate, this prompt especially appeals to me.

{Maybe I am revealing too much.  Fate and Christianity don’t necessarily go hand in hand, do they?}

Yes, there are many ‘What-Ifs’, and this past week I undoubtedly spent too much time considering them.  But introspection can be healthy, right?

Now I just need to look for the learning.

If you’d like to try this out yourself, Mama Kat posts her prompts on Tuesdays.