Serendipity

Perry’s Blog: October 15, 2014

The older I get, the more I believe in serendipity. The Divide is being constructed around that premise – that the world will bring you wonderful people and wonderful opportunities if you allow it to. I think you do that by trying always to go through the open doors, and to stop pounding on the closed ones, which is very hard to do.

Most of us are fatally attracted to anyone or anything that isn’t attracted to us. The other way to woo serendipity is to learn to recognize it. It seems to often come disguised in many insidious ways. It tests us, always presenting us with good excuses to dismiss the chances that the world offers us. I believe The Divide, and the people who have joined me in this project, are my chance, my great opportunity to use all that I have learned and all that I have become.

Because I love the word serendipity, and the concept, and because I am always fascinated by word derivations, I looked it up. Being an old guy, I did it the old way – I checked in the William and Mary Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, a wonderful book I have owned for many years. Turns out there is an old Persian fairy tale called “The Three Princes of Serendip” about princes who “keep making discoveries of things they were not in search of.” Horace Walpole coined the word based on the old tale. Lovely.