An encounter with serendipity
All the best things in life…
The best thing that ever happened to me wasn’t planned.
One summer evening, seven years ago, I stepped into a bar in Luang Prabang and there he was: warm, humorous—the perfect stranger.
Over the course of the evening, we related our lives over drinks, then dinner, exchanged our numbers, close hug goodbye.
It was his last evening in the town, and later he’d tell me he would have walked straight past the bar if the owner Lisa hadn’t seen him hesitating and beckoned him in.
If Lisa hadn’t called out, if I hadn’t turned up, if we hadn’t been vacationing in the same place at the same time, I’d never have met my partner.
Our relationship was built on love and intention, but it was never planned—serendipity brought us together.
Serendipity awaits
All the best things in my life are gifts of serendipity.
Meeting my partner, getting introduced to the work of the author who’d offer me my dream job as his Newsletter Manager, sitting next to the woman who’d become my first friend in Ho Chi Minh City at a dinner, a chance conversation with a fellow creator that resolved my writer’s existential crisis and refuelled me with purpose.
None of this was, could have been, planned. All was the result of leaving myself open to new experiences and seizing whatever opportunities arose.
All of this also happened in the past ten years, a decade marked by an emergent awareness of the insecurities that had compelled my younger self’s over-planning, and a corresponding attempt to leave space for serendipity.
An unplanned morning, a stroll down an unknown street, saying “yes” to something I don’t typically agree to, saying “no” to experiences that serve only to fill time.
It’s the space I’ve left that has rewarded me with a life beyond my dreams, a life of joy, enriching relationships, purposeful work.
Though none of this was easy.
Our eternal struggle
I am a planner. I like to have exact to-do’s that dictate my work day and am invariably at the mercy of my calendar—I need to know if I’m meeting Adam for drinks at 3pm or 3:30pm in three weeks.
It has been, will always be, a struggle to leave space and see what happens, and not just for me.
Humans don’t like uncertainty. We don’t like not knowing what we’re doing, how something will turn out, what’s going to happen to us, our family, our friends, our country.
And so we plan. We try to anticipate every eventuality and put in place mechanisms to minimise the damage uncertainty might inflict on our body, our psyche, our emotions.
This is why we work hard, treat our friends right, buy health insurance.
If these sound like regular living, I invite you to dig deeper to uncover your master planner within.
You don’t work hard mindlessly. You work hard to influence a desired outcome: a promotion, a raise, the guarantee of the next paycheck, the possibility of retirement. That’s planning.
You don’t treat your friends right mindlessly. You refrain from spitting in their face to occasion a future with that friend. That’s planning.
You don’t buy insurance just because an agent tells you to. You shell out all that money because you are, hopefully, aware you’re mortal and might need someone to pay for a critical operation you cannot afford one day.
Your entire life is planning. It’s normal and necessary. What’s not necessary, nor beneficial, is planning everything in your life believing this guarantees eternal happiness and zero surprises.
The struggle against this master planner is the story of my life. For three decades I’d let it control every aspect of my being, in the process starving serendipity from my over-planned existence.
Today, though, I know better. I know what magic I’m trading for certainty, and, though it’s difficult, I do leave the space. For accidental encounters with people I’d like to see, for friends to initiate dinners, for cosy foot massages to spontaneously indulge in.1 For serendipity.
Do you?
What do you think?
Do you leave space for serendipity?
Do you fill your life with plans? Or would you rather enjoy serendipity’s endless surprises? What does your answer tell you about yourself? Please hit “reply” or leave a comment—I read every response and I’d love to hear from you. If you want, share this post with someone you’d like to encounter serendipitously.
Until next Friday… Stay thoughtful,
Val
In fact, I had one just now and it was glorious.
I like to approach life with the mentality of half-planned/half-unplanned. Travel taught me this. Instead of having a rigid itinerary, I learned to keep things fluid on my first long-term trip. I had some set checkpoints scheduled in, but I would fill in the space with just random opportunities that would come up.