Serendipity

Kate Wyland

.

Serendipity: An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. Good fortune; luck:

When I was casting about for a topic for this blog, I happened to think about a get together I attended the other night, where a group of us started talking about being spontaneous. Some of the people didn’t consider themselves to be at all spontaneous and others, like me, were used to taking spur of the moment actions. However, each of us had at least one happy result from acting spontaneously.

What struck me was that spontaneity was closely connected to luck or serendipity. Good results happen when the stars line up and good fortune is on your side.

I don’t know about you, but serendipity has played a big role in my life. So many things have come about as a result of simple luck. I met my husband through a serendipitous set of circumstances. One Friday night when I was in college, my soon-to-be-ex boyfriend had car trouble and cancelled our date. As a result I was sitting with nothing to do when a sorority sister asked anyone would like to go to a concert with her, her boyfriend and his roommate, whose date had gotten ill. Said roommate was the one with the car, hence the need to find him someone to go with. I really liked the group they planned to see, so I said I’d do it.

To my delight, I had a great time and really liked the roommate. I was quite disappointed when he didn’t call to ask me out again. (This was in the pre-liberated days when girls didn’t routinely call guys.) It turned out that he had been told I had a boyfriend and wasn’t available. So serendipity stepped in again. One afternoon, he came to my sorority house to return a book to another girl who was in one of his classes.

As luck would have it, I answered the doorbell, and after he returned the book, we stood and talked and talked. I asked him for a ride home at Thanksgiving (another serendipitous break—he lived in the town next to mine) and he asked me to the movies. A year later we were married. Two cancelled dates and one unexpected meeting changed our lives forever.

This type of thing has happened constantly throughout our lives. Our move to the town we live in was a result of unexpected luck. At Christmas time, we’d always gone to the nearby mountains to cut down a tree, but the farms there had all switched to raising Douglas Firs, which I’m allergic to. So we decided to try a different area. We accidentally missed the turn to the Christmas tree farm, and when we turned around there was a For Sale sign that we decided to investigate.

As it happened, the owner of the property was out in front and he invited us in. My husband fell in love with the house and I could see how to create a horse setup—with a lot of work. My daughter and I were boarding our horses at a stable that was a half-hour drive each way and the thought of having our horses at home was very appealing. Five months later we moved in. (After a lot of due diligence and selling our current house.)

Serendipity has affected my writing too. My book Wyoming Escape is a result of a stay at a Wyoming dude ranch, which I won at Brenda Novak’s auction for diabetes research. One of the incidents in that book also came about serendipitously. Walking along the beach one day while I was writing it, I encountered a man who was doing martial arts moves against the wall as he walked along. That morphed into one of my characters being a Tae Kwon Do black belt and “fighting” with a tree, something I would never have thought of otherwise.

How has serendipity influenced your life? Your writing? Do you take advantage of happy chances or are you the more cautious type and weigh everything carefully? Are there lucky breaks you wished you had taken advantage of or ones you’re glad you passed by?

.

.

FOREWARNING
Healing is her life. Will it be her death?

.

.

.

Wyoming Escape
Two dead bodies. One dirty cop.
Is she next?

.

.

.

 Images – A Love Story
She’s learned to hide from life.
Should she hide from him?

.

.

Connect with Kate Wyland:
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKateWyland
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/katewyland
Website : http://katewyland.com