--- title: "Serendipity" description: "For the Type A planner who could use one unplanned afternoon." author: "Rahim Rasul" type: "Podcast episode" series: "Halftime Talks" episode: 95 published: "2016-06-14" duration: "17 min" theme: "Appreciation and perspective" tags: "serendipity, travel, street photography, openness" audio: "https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/rahimrasul/HTT095_Serendipity.mp3?dest-id=175061" url: "https://iloveprocess.com/halftime/serendipity/" site: "I Love Process" --- # Serendipity _For the Type A planner who could use one unplanned afternoon._ **The question:** Why not have a serendipitous adventure? Listen: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/rahimrasul/HTT095_Serendipity.mp3?dest-id=175061 ## Before you listen How can you open yourself to more of the magical moments of life? Serendipity. As we embrace a serendipitous approach to experience, more of the magic emerges in our moments. The talk sets out what serendipity is, with Joseph Campbell on where the word comes from, and why it is worth becoming open to it. My wife is a planner and I'm a loosey goosey non-planner, and the balance works for us. Years ago in Portugal, a woman who heard me asking for chicken ended up driving us to Sintra, a Knights Templar castle and the westernmost tip of Europe. In San Francisco, a coffee tour led me to street photographers and a street photography festival I joined the next day. Life is an adventure, and the things you cannot orchestrate are often the best part of the trip. Listen for the ask to the Type A personalities: take your hands off the wheel for an afternoon or a weekend, and trust the world to reflect your readiness. ## From the talk > When we become so outcome driven, so goal set, we choke off the opportunity for how magic can truly flow into our lives. > > The more that you begin with a prefabricated idea of what you want, the more you also close yourself to the majesty of what can be presenting itself to you. > > The common denominator in all of this is the openness that you bring to the moment. ## Sit with this - Would you rather be at an amazing ballet, or in a club, watching people flow with the rhythm and the spontaneity of the music? - Is there anything that I have to see in your great city? ## Transcript Here we are episode 95. But before we jump into the episode, let's begin in a friendlier place and taking some stuff we can appreciate. So today, I was pondering, I was thinking to myself, so isn't it amazing? Right now in our world with the technology we have, we can research and understand any thing on YouTube, on podcast in journals and articles on blogs. And if we have a question or curiosity, there is somebody who has probably led the way if not lead the way where you're going to get the answer than has done a great job of preparing the baton to be passed to your curiosity to your interest, just go on YouTube, see any search engine, the information is available. And that is something that I like yourself, fully and truly appreciate. As I begin to record today's episode, I'm joined in the studio by my favorite guest of all time, the sounds of New York City in the summertime. So you may hear law Moore's you may hear sirens, you may hear children running around in the background. But hey, that's just what it is. And today's episode is an episode that I've been pondering for a while this episode that really, really speaks to the core of my personality. And what we're going to be talking about today is that secret sauce of experience that secret sauce known as serendipity, and how we can begin to cultivate a relationship with its essence. And, you know, I've done it for years. I obviously trust myself, but there's, there's a benefit to it. And there's also a benefit if you have a particular personality style. So without further ado, by the way, I'm going to have to look up the word adieu. So without further ado, let's jump into this episode. So strap in your seat belt, clear the debris for me area, your mind your space, and let's go. To begin this episode, I thought it would be prudent to at first define what serendipity is before I can ask you to utilize it a little bit more. You may have used it in conversation, you may have seen a movie about it with John Q sack and Kate Beckinsale is a great romantic movie. So if you haven't seen it, pull your significant other side and check it out. I digress. And you also have may have been to the cafe in New York called serendipity. But that's not where I want to begin, I want to give a contextual historical understanding of serendipity. And to do that I'm going to play an excerpt from one of my favorite teachers, the leading comparative pathologist, Joseph Campbell, doesn't get any better than him. And he's gonna go into a little bit of a background on the origin of serendipity. [Excerpt: Joseph Campbell on the origin of the word serendipity.] Now that we've brought a proper context to the understanding of the origins of serendipity and what serendipity is, I want to tell you why we're doing this episode. It's clearly a casual episode where I'm really diving into an idea to have food for thought so you can go into the world and live better, blah, blah, blah. But as Joseph Campbell noted, and how he described it, we're talking about adventure. And life is an adventure and adventures are all about the moments. And serendipity is this passport is distrusting of the universe is trusting of yourself that the landscape is prepared for you. So recently, as recent as this last weekend, I went to San Francisco with my wife, I joined her on a work trip. Now, in my mind, we have this beautiful yin and yang balance. I'm a free thinking loosey goosey non planner, and she is a planner, a lot of things should be organized and schedule. But what works really well for us is the nice parity between the two. I want to give an opportunity for the magic to show itself. And when I say magic, I'm talking about the things that you cannot orchestrate the things that you cannot plan the things that life will just deliver to your doorstep. Now in the history of me traveling around the world and around the United States of America. I've had these remarkable magical experiences that really are the best parts of these trips. For example, years ago, I was in Portugal, we were in a mall, myself and a friend looking for buy a te. One of the people locally, I didn't speak Portuguese. They wrote Galinda on my hand. And that was chicken. I was looking for some chicken. And a woman came up from behind and started laughing and she was like, Oh, you're looking for chicken. I was like, Yes, I am. She was like it's going to be Franco. So I looked up found Franco. And I thanked her and asked her to join myself and my friend. One of the things I always ask when I travel is Is there anything that I have to see in your great city? Before I leave? I shouldn't miss right? And so we pull out the map and she access certain things. And I asked how do we get there? And she says, I don't know I don't usually take the train. And so she circled something else. And we asked her how do we get there by train as well? And she again replies I don't know I drive. And after the third or fourth circle in question bank, she says you know what, tomorrow, I will take you blew my mind. She says meet me here at this corner tomorrow. And I will take you to these places. So the next day we woke up we met her she picks us up we drive to the most beautiful scene in Portugal is a top these hillsides, called Sientra. And we went to a Knights Templar Castle had an authentic Portuguese brunch, lunch. And then she took us to the beach, that westernmost tip of Europe drove us back into town. And it was amazing. That is a serendipitous adventure. What I'm asking from you is really not a big ask. I'm asking use expecially. Specifically, the Type A personalities is to let your hands off the wheel for a bit. So the Type A personalities need to plan every hour. There's nothing that needs to be missed. It's very productive. It's very efficient. It's very planned and regimented. Thus, it informs us that the thing that we do not want to give up is control. And that control is obviously saying that there's a fear that if I let go of the wheel, this car will find itself in a ditch soon, but innately intuitively, intrinsically, what we love is the improvisation to life. Look at the rise of reality TV, it is an unscripted drum. Obviously, there's some scripting going along. But we like to feel that it is happening before our eyes, would you rather be at an amazing ballet, or in a club, watching people flow with the rhythm and the spontaneity of the music, doing dances and in listening and communicating with each other, finding that natural rhythm of the moment. And that's what I'm asking you to open yourself up to a little bit more. Now, it will take a little bit of time, you will have to begin to trust the environment to be ready for you. Similar to what Joseph Campbell said, the world in which I live in, is clearly constructed by a divine intelligence in our experiences emerge as well from that similar space. It's like driving on a highway in the fog, where you can only see a couple 100 meters ahead of you. And you trust that the next bit of the road will continue to reveal itself. Living in serendipity or with a serendipitous approach is no different. Recently in San Francisco, I had no plan except that I knew I was going to have fun and I knew I was going to shoot some photography. So I wake up. My only intention now is to find a few coffee shops to enjoy myself in. I went on a coffee tour, I went to some of the best coffee shops, the city had to offer, specifically Sightglass coffee, beautiful space. So as I'm ramping from coffee shop to coffee shop, I'm meeting some interesting characters. At the last or one of the last coffee shops I go to is ritual coffee, and I meet other street photographers on the street photographer, I find out that they're having a street photography festival in San Francisco right now as it's going on. So the next day, I join the street photography festival, meet some other street photographers go on a photo walk across, I want to say North Beach in San Francisco. Wow. And street photography is the essence of serendipity. It is not orchestrated, it is trusting the world to deliver the cast of characters gestures and photographs, to your camera to your lens to your eye. It is understanding there's a harmony and a balance that as you prepare yourself, you will interact with what you prepare for. In street photography, the more that you begin with a prefabricated idea of what you want, the more you also close yourself to the majesty of what can be presenting itself to you. And with street photography, like serendipity, it is not necessarily about being productive and efficient. And being responsible. It is about photographing, and loving the process and a dance of the technique that will continue to refine itself. So street photography is so analogous to serendipity because we thrust ourselves into the world and experience the adventure that we are ready for. As we trust our intuitions and our instincts, our life becomes this moving art. When we become so outcome driven. So goal set, we choke off the opportunity for how magic can truly flow into our lives. It's about the process. It's about falling in love with the process, which by the way does yield great outcomes. But by being so restrictive by saying it has to happen this way or that way. We close ourselves off to this magical dimension of experience that can effortlessly make its way available to our moments. So go out there in the world and give yourself an afternoon or maybe a weekend where you don't plan it you just trust that everything works out for you. You know, everything works in your favor. You will meet some interesting characters. You will trust the environment of the world to reflect your readiness. Yours serendipitous adventure may yield you a conversation that evolves around some of the passions that you have. It may be seeing somebody you haven't seen in a long time or meeting somebody new with a shared interest. It opens up differently. It expresses itself differently. But the common denominator in all of this is the openness that you bring to the moment. These great experiences of our life are to be treasured. These are the treasured moments and I keep emphasizing the word treasured because the wealth of our life. At the end of our life, we will not necessarily worry about the material wealth, but the life that we live the moments that are treasured, that is a true wealth. And it begins with an adventure, so why not have a serendipitous adventure?