Serendipity as the holes in temporal probability

junyabee:

Part I-Preface
My personal introduction and history with 'serendipity'.


Part II-Qualities of Serendipity
Aspects of Serendipity and the reasons for those aspects over temporal habits. What to look for and some ways of response to them, so to avoid your own degrading degeneration.


Part III-Things which contribute to the 'appearance' of serendipity: the energies from the chemicals induced by exercise rather than a couch-potato or more sedentary existence, facilitates the perception and interpretation of serendipity phenomenon and their affects on our thinking and cognitions

Zanjan: "Serendipity" (dic.com) Noun

1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident
2. good fortune; luck. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.

(Mir-Web)

1. luck that takes the form of finding valuable or pleasant things that are not looked for

Who writes these misleading entries??! They're called 'accidents' because WE didn't plan them. If we owned the ability (faculty) to create any event, it wouldn't be an accident. If we don't look for something, we'll NEVER find it, even if someone throws it in our face.

The word was coined by some author of a child's fiction book, and people ran with it.

Zanjan: Now that we have that straight, let's look at what actually happens. Here's a real life example:

I had no idea that when I ran from the city to live in the distant country side, I was preparing the way for my long-lost brother. Suffice to say, I thought I was merely going to a safer place. Little did I know something bigger was afoot – God’s plans are wider than the eye can see.

Although it worked out well for me over the years, I’m not the center of the universe.

A string of serendipitous events unfolded – that is, a tree grew as one event led to another. If we’re patient enough to use our powers of observation acutely, following the leaves back to the trunk, we’ll soon find ourselves at the root of truth; and, this is it:

If God wants to move you, He’ll set a fire under your stubborn butt; you WILL move.

junyabee: I left out my own life anecdotes in detail, beyond the teacher and the few mentioned..
There were events that acted as compensation, if not redemption for my own failings..
The hat-check girl at my junior problem who was from my neighborhood, and my conversation w/her made up for the lousy night w/my date
The reading of Nathan Glazer's 'Lonely Crowd' at the time I was formulating my academic course for either my expectations for myself or for others
The deja vu of encountering the young gal who'd be the profound giver of resolution to me, as well as my junior counselor at a Summer Day Camp, 3 months prior when she rhetorically dispatched my street greeting to her
Moments after ending a heated argument w/a gal I had been casually visiting for the past 3-years, a call comes in w/in 10 seconds after that from a gal-friend of a classmate, whom I met at lunch earlier and she was asking what I had planned for that Friday
A scene of a dream that was a morale booster for me from a disheartening letter from earlier in the day, became the surreal presence on a memorial brochure at a memorial service I attended by accident
3-months later, I had just been fired-for very just cause-and was clueless beyond temp-work where I was going to find work. I get home and the answering machine has the call from the supervisor at the main trauma hospital calling me in for my pre-hire interview
2-years ago, I had just learned that an online employer had been using me in a transfer money scam that had affected an account at my bank for which I had to pay reparations. I had just finished making the reparations w/the bank for the pay back, when I get a phone call from a local employer who want me to come to interview for a job I did get from them

I'm well aware of the workings of serendipity and synchronicity, since I've been a mentee of theirs as a sign for others not to be so tied to the paradigms of this world

Zanjan: To my view, the things you've described are responses related to something you've done, like sending out resumes everywhere in the last 3 years or so - I'm still getting offers from Linked - In", and I don't even want a new job because I've been semi-retired for quite awhile.

The other instances you've described are related to a weak psychic connection, such as the dream - that's just a burp of precognition. Try to do that when you're awake.

I don't see the point of assigning a new name for something that already has one. Alas, this is a modern trend. Curious timing is called 'co-incidence", it might feel freaky but has no import to you when it's not something you can run with for a long time. When the co-incidence is an unfortunate event for the individual, we call that "irony" - God's sense of humour.

Whatever serendipity is to you, in my mind, it isn't restricted to mere convenience - it holds deep meaning as an integral part of a sustained plan, unbeknownst to us except in hindsight.

Zanjan: Let me give another example:

The earliest memories my brother and I have are those of living in a foster home on a farm in another province. One day, a woman arrived – we were told it was our mother. She took us to the train and off we went for a long trip to our new home. We were excited, of course, being such a momentous event, to land at the little train station in Calgary, which Mom told us was a “one-horse town”. We lived there all our lives.

Fast forward to the story I posted – the day I ran from the city to live in my new country home.

Once my stuff was piled into the new house, I had time to look around at the property. See, I had purchased it quickly, looking at a few on-line photos with only 15 minutes to make a decision. Now I could see what I’d bought.

Everywhere I looked, I saw the same flower designs on the wall paper, the lamps, the wall mirror and glass cabinetry – they were the same flowers as my name. What a co-incidence! The house was just a few years old, so spacious and well-laid out for my needs, I felt it was built just for me.

I went to get groceries. While driving down the main street of town, I noticed there was a museum with a lovely flower garden in front. The building seemed familiar so I stopped for a closer look and went inside.

Sure enough, there was a commemorative plaque - this building, in this little town so far away, was the exact same train station building my brother and I had landed at in Calgary 48 years previously! Two co-incidences on the same day?

In religious terms, we call those things a “confirmation” – meaning, a sign from God that what is was supposed to be. This sign told me the decision I’d made wasn’t wrong. Yes, I was supposed to be here in this place – God planned it long ago, making sure there would be a way I could know that.

I’ve lived here now for 14 years and found my brother 1.5 years ago, after not having seen him for 25 years. This weekend, I’m moving him here from the city – he’s never seen this town and its museum; and, it’s the first time in his life he will have his *own* home. Can’t wait to take him to the museum to blow his mind. Yes, he was supposed to be here too….there was just a bit of delay.

Zanjan: As for the hat check girl, I've had dates where everybody in the room provided better entertainment.

Zanjan: There are people who believe in "Soul Mates" - that is, a specific person God specially designed for you to be the ideal match as a couple, like interlocking puzzle pieces. Well, I don't give that much credence, seeing as we're all shaped in different ways by our unique environment.

However, I'm amongst many who think that certain people are DESTINED to be together, come what may. We think this because we have so many true stories of obstacles that separated us, where the odds of coming together were phenomenally slim, if not impossible.

When I met the man who was to become my second husband, we both wondered why we couldn't have met years ago. We're perfect together. I guess we weren't ready for each other when we were young. Yet having met late in life, we marvel at our separate journeys because we had come so close to meeting but not close enough.

As a child, living in a foster home with my brother, my future husband lived only a short distance away on another farm in the same county. After we came to this province, he slowly made his way here too - at age 20, we lived 3 hours drive from each other. When I temporarily moved to the Okanagan in B.C., so did he; we lived 20 minutes away from each other. When I left it to return to our province, he returned as well. Still, we'd never even heard of each other.

We had married individuals who were the total opposite of our characters; we brought up our kids - all boys, each of us. Every few years, he would move closer to my city. When I left the city for the last time, both of us were single again and he left his city too, moving to a small town 1 hour away from here. A few years later, he moved to my town and that's when we met. We were ready then.

This is the stuff of movies only because it actually happens. There is some strong magnetic force two people somehow connect with and we kind of orbit around it until we, like living planets on a pre-ordained course, cross each other's path at precisely the correct time.

junyabee: I see your point and have a parallel consensus to the phenomena of 'soul mate'. There are those people who exist on the same resonant frequency of feeling that there is a congruence along with the covalent/ionic bonding that will occur for however long.

As receiver/transmitter bodies we incidentally learn about how we best respond, and coincidentally learn to what and to whom we can discover those optimal responses from all the incoming 'background noise' of our historical environs. Those people, situations, 'things' provide a form of affirmation for our primal intuitions. [In this world they're an oasis of pleasure amongst the rolling-eyed disaffections!]

For me I was incidentally marginal in my associations to the social trends and secular protocols. I could posture and perform to a competent degree, but I never had a consistent or continual motivation for coherence-and later adherence-to those social constructs, In fact, over time BEFORE I began to give credence to the serendipities and synchronicities I had this intuitive estrangement. AFTER noting the frequency and fortuities of the serendipities and synchronicities, I became more affirmatively and proactively estranged in my skepticisms (and growing cynicisms) for having ANY adherence, let alone coherence to those forms. People became more signs than destination or end points

OBTW, this conversation began at the portal of my birth zodiac, Virgo, and through my birth date on Wednesday. Doing a project on Thursday kept me preoccupied from checking this site. As serendipity would have it, your response has resonated most with me.

[I forgot the to tell you the time I was at a friend's house washing my clothes while listening to the now defunct NPR's TALK-OF-THE-NATION. That particular program had an objectivist and reductionist who were dismissing the mystical and spiritual. I was so incensed by their smugness, that I was shouting my contrariness at the radio to the point of high agitation. Moments after the radio program ended, the house phone rang. Since it was my friend's house and I was a recently new returnee to town, I first hesitated to avoid the 3rd degree I'd be getting from the caller about who I was, etc.. BUT, because their moms was in a local nursing home in a coma, the phone call could be from there and, ethically, I was compelled to answer it. WHEN I DID ANSWER IT, the person asked for ME. They were the headhunters who had placed an ad in a magazine to which I had responded a few weeks before. They were calling to ask me if I was available to start this job that would be paid 3x's+ what I was earning doing the part-time/temp gigs I was doing at the time]

junyabee: Beyond having credence for the possibility of those supra-paranormal dimensions, the 'affects' have occurred at intense emotional moments of sincerity and clarity for me.. FYI

junyabee@gmail.com

junyabee: As for the 3-resume responses occurring at the moment I most wanted and needed them in a non-seeking, though distressed condition, I perceive as a too fortuitous intervention when it occurs in similar forms in a frequency of people or events occurring at such timely moments that challenge normal probability, or the usual mundane course of things, but for the emotional urgency of the moment..