Serendipity Is it just a happy accident?

by Caz Makepeace on October 2, 2011

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Have you ever found yourself struggling to explain to someone what serendipity means?

You understand it, you certainly feel it when it happens to you, but you just can’t exactly define it or describe it.

Photo:Madmoiselle Lavender lou

Serendipity has been voted one of the top ten English words that are hardest to translate, so don’t feel stupid if you struggle like I do sometimes to explain it.

Serendipity and Magic

I think its hard to explain because serendipity involves magic. A magic from an unknown and unseen force. It is hard for us to understand and believe those things that appear in our lives like magic and sometimes we really don’t want to try to explain them.

Merriam Webster defines it as a “phenomenon of finding valuable of agreeable things not sought for.”

In its simplest forms serendipty means a happy accident.

But is it just a happy accident or part of a greater plan.

Chance encounters, off hand comments that lead to you securing that longed for promotion or job, a book landing in your lap with that message that seems almost as if it was written for you.

How often have these happy accidents occurred in your life? Do you even know that they are there?

Often we don’t realize our happy accidents are actually serving a higher purpose until days, months or even years after them when we can look back and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Oh yeah, that would never have happened if…”

Travelling allowed me to witness serendipity in many different forms. I don’t know how many thimes I have had these random travel encounters showing me that the world is indeed small.

A friend wrote a guest post on “Travel and Serendipity” even on our blog this week.

Serendipity can also sometimes be shaken off as being luck. Meh I don’t subscribe to the word luck. For me there is no such thing.

Luck or serendipitous events arrive when you are prepared for the opportunity.

Luck comes from preparation and hard work. That is when you see the magic or the happy accidents occurring.

Lots of serendipitous events happened for me lately, which had me thinking about this whole concept once again. If there is magic then I am all over it, this blog is all about putting the mojo, or magic, back into your life.

A seemingly “Happy Accident” happened which has set me down a path I had thought about walking many years ago. A path a clairvoyant (yes that woo woo stuff again) once told me about and a path that I was eventually hoping my blog would take.

After our good news with the Qantas crusade, Lina from Mothers Letters asked if she could interview me about it, which I gladly said yes to.

She got talking to Darren Rowse about it, who is having a problogger event in Melbourne at the end of October. He liked the sound of what we had been achieving with our travel blog and the direction this could mean for bloggers working with brands and has asked us to speak about it at his event.

Happy accident? or all part of some greater plan that no one can ever foresee or plan for?

I’ll take the magic over the accident any day.