Wikipedia defines serendipity as “the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.”
It’s going out to dinner with friends and meeting your Forever Love at First Sight and never changing. It’s Pasteur experimenting with molds and discovering what ultimately allowed the creation of Penicillin. It’s getting fired from a job which prompts you to start your own business. It’s an unpredictable result that occurs, most often, quite by surprise from what appears to be a completely unrelated set of circumstances. It’s an apple falling from a tree that gives us Isaac Newton’s insight about gravity.
It’s being at the right time for a completely different reason than what ultimately occurs, but having the wisdom to recognize the value of what you have when you see it. Is serendipity all around us? Is it rare in your experience? Is it more than luck or chance, by definition, since it implies destiny?
Think of at least three life-changing events that, for you, have been the product of serendipity. What made you take advantage of them? How have you honored those moments? What about those times have proven magical for you? Can you trust yourself to know serendipity when you see it – and to act on it?
Have a Great Independence Day! Be free!