Serendipity Rules

I’ve come to the realization that serendipity ([definition: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for] from Merriam-Webster) rules my life. Things happen to me. Things happen to everybody. That’s what life is all about…getting things to happen to you.

There isn’t a lot that happens to me, but I’ve noticed that most of the things that do happen usually tend to be good things. I’m always stumbling onto a lot of things. Most of the time blindly, sometimes while doing or looking for other things. But always unexpected. Usually it turns out the a good thing. Not always, but mostly. Maybe I have a lot of good karma built up from a previous life or something. Maybe I’ve just blocked out the bad things so I don’t remember them anymore. Whatever the case, I just seem to remember a lot more good things than bad things happening to me.

Today for example, I happened to be heading down to the cafeteria for lunch. Every year, the MUSC cafeteria people have a pumpkin carving contest. They supply the pumpkins, and people from all over the hospital pick one up and make some kind of neat and clever carved pumpkin. The day before Halloween, they get displayed in the hallway outside the cafeteria. It’s always an entertaining event. Anyway, back to the story.

I was checking out the pumpkins, along with all the other people destined for the cafeteria to get some grub. I thought to myself, “Self, you have your camera here. It might be cool to get some piictures of the more interesting pumpkins.”. So I turned around and asked one of the cafeteria managers, who just happened to be standing behind me, if it would be ok to take some pictures. “Sure,” he said, “in fact, do you have a pumpkin entered?” I told him I did not, and he said “Come with me.”

I followed him into his office, where he handed me a meal ticket, a clipboard with a form on it, and asked if I wanted to judge the pumpkins. “Cool” I said. So he explained the judging process to me and off I went. Judging was simple. Only two criteria, originality and creativity, scored out of 5. As usual, there were a lot of good pumpkins around. Some were pretty ordinary, others were more elaborate. So I judged, and then went to get lunch with my meal ticket. And all for asking if I could take some pictures.

There are others. The way I met my wife, the summer job I got during undergrad that led me onto my current career path and the job I got after I finished my master’s degree are probably the most recent significant events. Maybe I’ll write about them in future entries. It’s not always big good things happening to me. Those happen very rarely. Mostly it’s little good things, like today. And those are the things I enjoy most.

I’ve always been a firm believer that whatever happens to me, good or bad, things will all work out in the end. And you know what, they almost always do. At least for me anyway.

[UPDATE]: If you want to see the pumpkins, head on over to the gallery and have a look.