Serendipity

Aren't there some words that you just love? I love the word serendipity. I also love serendipitous events. The dictionary describes serendipity as: the ability to make fortunate discoveries by accident, such as finding interesting items of information while looking for something else; something found by a lucky accident; a chance discovery.

On our trip to China, we stopped overnight in Singapore. While touring that incredibly beautiful and clean city, visiting a Hindu temple, the skies opened up and dumped on us. A vendor had some umbrellas for sale and I grabbed the first one I could put my hands on without even looking at it. Later, when I had time to examine it, I realized it had the national symbols of Singapore, along with their beautiful paisley design that is found on many things in their city/country. I had picked up the perfect souvenir from Singapore without even knowing it.

Just this week, a cute little girl came selling Girl Scout cookies. Her mom was with her and introduced herself as our new neighbor who had moved in down the street. Serendipity: I thought I was just buying Girl Scout cookies, but got to meet a new neighbor I didn't know had moved in. But that serendipitous event didn't end there. They were having septic problems.

(Yes, we are on a septic system instead of a sewer system because our neighborhood was built in 1971 and we were too far out of town for the sewer system to reach. For years we were "the last green spot on the hill," meaning you could look up the hill and see trees and know that was our neighborhood.) But I digress - as usual.

The tile men who were fixing their bathroom were the same ones we have used in all our tile makeovers over the last 25 years. They told her they had re-done our bathrooms and that I was a writer. She told me her husband worked in Hollywood, but she worked at home, transferring video to DVDs. Serendipity! Shelley was just going to come and get the camcorder tape which had their honeymoon pictures and send it away to have it put on DVD. Voila! I discovered a professional just down the street who can do it for her instead of sending it away. And now I can get all the other films on DVD from this particular camera. We had already done all of our VHS videos to DVD, but I had forgotten this little used camera and it's smaller cassettes.

So I love serendipity. I'd give you more fun examples, but I hear my company getting out of the shower and I need to go fix breakfast. And that is the reason I didn't blog yesterday - too much company and not enough time to get to the computer.

Hope you have some fun serendipitous events in your life. They can make mundane things much more interesting.