Contemplating serendipity
Due to recent experiences, I was just contemplating serendipity.
Let’s demonstrate with a story.
You meet the “right person�, perhaps it’s the perfect business partner, life partner or friend. Unfortunately due to your wrong frame of mind and bad attitude, you screw up horribly by turning your back, not taking that step or running in the opposite direction. You write it off as the wrong time, the wrong place, or complication. You soothe yourself thinking that there is something or somebody more suited out there.
Years later you bump into that “perfect” person and you are suddenly filled with overwhelming regret at your prior stupidity and for opportunity wasted. You wish you could change things, but it’s way too late for that! The person is now married or a multi-millionaire. You ask yourself whether it was really the wrong time or whether you were just a selfish twit, preoccupied with finding yourself, or perhaps a wimp for not taking a chance.
So you had the good fortune to meet the right person but screwed up, and “consequence” followed. Is fate to blame, or your lack of action in seeing and taking an opportunity?
31/08/2007 at 9:27 am
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31/08/2007 at 2:58 pm
Hi!
Serendipity or nostalgia?
Always remember that it is never too late to get something you want!
People only fail to get what they want for one of two reasons: Either they give up or they’re too complacent to shake the tree.
31/08/2007 at 3:23 pm
Ha - someone that understands!!!
I wrote this post after a discussion with someone that found themselves in this “dilemma”.
Apart from giving up and complacency, I believe fear is a huge factor!
My thoughts were exactly the same as yours though.
Serendipity is basically the luck or good fortune of meeting someone unexpectedly. It’s your fault if you didn’t take action and also if you don’t take action later in life - whatever the outcome may be.
If you want something, take some action! Don’t give up and summon up some guts! If more people take action when the moment arises then there would be less regret and nostalgia in the world!
03/09/2007 at 11:40 am
Oh that happens to me all the time. The main thing to keep in mind is that time tends to cast a rosy glow over your memories. Something that you remember as being a major lost opportunity now, probably wasn’t all that great back then.
04/09/2007 at 9:17 pm
Fate is created by yourself (sub, or) consciously). I live by it. Its just about finding the phone, or yourself, and picking up the phone, or yourself. Step one’s a learning process, step two a learning curve.
You can add that to “molo’s blurbs” as well. Yay.
05/09/2007 at 6:12 pm
Nice one Molo. We seem to share many common beliefs and values.
I believe in creating your own destiny too.
I for one have never had a single regret in my life. I doubt if that will change soon.
It’s a question about being conscious about your decisions and thought processes and accepting that at a particular moment in time, something was or wasn’t right for you and then never looking back and moping about those decisions.
Life can be kinda complex and often you are thrown with some “curve balls” that shove you into certain direction, but it’s still what you make of it and how you handle it.
18/09/2007 at 9:38 pm
A bit late on my commentary but I know _exactly_ how it feels to look back on life and wonder how things could have been. (My ex is about to leave SA for good which has made me exceedingly introspective so please take my waffle with a pinch of salt).
I believe that most of the time we make the decisions we initially regret we are actually just suffering from the “what if” syndrome. What if we didn’t break up etc.
However, usually our initial “gut feel” is right. You don’t need to be female to have intuition. (apparently it helps though)
Unfortunately, because we are human, our intuition will fail us and we will make some really seriously stupid mistakes that we regret almost instantly and never stop regretting.
But even those disastrous mistakes have a benefit. The benefit of _hopefully_ knowing not to make the same stupid mistake the next time we’re faced with a similar situation. We do however have to be able to recognize our stupidity for this to work… (this is what keeps stupid people stupid)
Essentially what I’m saying is, what doesn’t kill you can only make you wiser, but yes, it can still hurt like hell.
ath.
j.