Serendipity

Serendipitously; the only way to look at life.

Each footfall we make is the result of a decision we've made. I could... wake up tomorrow and go to the store; clean my room; finally make up my mind about grad school. If you believe the maxim that, as privileged Americans, our only inhibitions are our own weaknesses, the world truly is wide open and waiting for any and all of our possible decisions. Something I have to remind myself daily is exactly that: my failures are my fault, and my missed chances can only be blamed on my lack of motivation.

But I digress.

Every decision we make has a positive or negative impact on our lives. Nothing we do is ever truly neutral in the schematics of fate. For instance, I could decide to make my journey to the store and find the perfect someone in the produce section, or I could plow through someone's yard and dismember a few garden gnomes. Simpler still, I could successfully buy the items I needed for whatever recipe I'm working on and accomplish some spectacular culinary feast... or, I could buy the items I needed and produce naught but baked sludge.

The series I just suggested is, of course, all speculation and isn't based upon fact (I would never produce baked sludge). However, it's all connected to the same decision, which is: wake up and go to the store.

Serendipity is defined as "the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way" by Mac Dictionary.

Negative outcomes are serendipitous. If our every decision yielded perfection, or something close to it, we would never learn anything. Referring back to my negative potential outcome (the gnome massacre), my decision to go to the store mixed with the mysteries of fate to produce a very unfortunate decision outcome. Having to pay for the damages, and the inevitable blow to my driver's ego, would not inspire happiness in me, but it's certainly beneficial. I would have learned how to contact the owners of the gnomes to repay them. I would have learned something new about my driving skills so that next time I make the decision to drive anywhere, gnomes across the globe will safer for my previous failure.


All of this is my playful way of saying that privileged Americans (there's that phrase again...) and people in general are always faced with the pitfalls of their decision-making. Even notably poor decisions are serendipitous for their learning value. One of my current mentors, Dr. Jennifer Richardson, constantly says, "It's a teaching-learning moment." She's on to something.

We are all suffering from something. Right now, while you're reading this, you're thinking about a decision you've made that didn't produce the results you hoped for. You're regretting something, despite how many of us repeat the mantra "there are no regrets" ad nauseum. And that's alright! Don't push the things you regret, or the decisions you've made that aren't perfect, aside. Don't actively force yourself to suffer more by dealing with them until they're "finished." They'll never be finished. They are part of you now.

Instead, I invite everyone to consider their decisions serendipitous (not a typo!). The good decisions are easy to understand because they provide our lives with positivity.

The "bad" decisions are going to be harder to understand, but that's just fine.