I’m not a great believer in serendipity, but some people believe that the right people, opportunities, and events show up precisely when needed. Once in my young adult days, when I was floundering around educationally and vocationally, I opened the mail to find a $20.00 refund check for an item I had returned. There was nothing extraordinary about receiving $20.00 on any particular day except that for reasons of poor planning and unexpected automobile repairs, I was completely broke. Payday was still several days away.
There was something almost magical and intoxicating about receiving that refund check when I needed it the most. I wondered if the law of serendipity played a role; that is, did the Universe somehow bend in my direction to provide precisely what I needed at that moment? Or was it just a mathematically predictable event that coincided with a financial low point?
My husband might be disappointed to read that I consider the $20.00 refund check the epitome of coincidental good fortune. After all, he and I met randomly in a stairwell in an office building. We worked for the same large engineering firm, but on different floors. Though our paths might have crossed before, this time my husband was talking to someone who knew me, and apparently told that dashing young civil engineer, “I think she’s single.” Without that momentary intersection in the stairwell, with the alignment of a third party who could somewhat vouch for my dating status, we might never have begun dating.
I’ve heard from people that they fell into the perfect exercise by a fluke. For example, one friend of mine randomly met someone that invited her to a rowing class, and someone I used to work with moved into an apartment next to a public tennis court. Lifelong sports passions began. The husband of a friend of mine was advised by his doctor to swim to aid his recovery from an accident, and he fell in love with the calming and rhythmic coolness of water. Without that accident, his decades-long habit of swimming every day might not have happened.
I believe that if you move around enough, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, that you’ll find exactly what you need when you need it. It’s certainly true for me when it comes to exercise. Throughout my life I tried all kinds of exercise from calisthenics, to aerobics, to swimming, to hitting tennis balls, to Yoga. Running was the only thing that drew me in, repeatedly.
Becoming a runner was less happy happenstance than it was serendipity by the process of elimination. As the old proverb says, the dog that trots about finds the bone!