I have a deep, unshakable affection for the movie Serendipity. Yes, the one with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale in cashmere and cosmic confusion. Go watch it now. I’ll wait. Okay… isn’t it predictable and sappy, but irresistible? Bonus points if you tell me you watched it with tissues and a tub of edible cookie dough. Sometimes real-life winks at us in the most perfectly timed ways. These little moments where the odds are too slim, too strangely timed to be “just chance,” that, my friend is serendipity.
Defining Serendipity (My Way)
I am 60+ and fed up with the coincidence definition of serendipity. Maybe it’s “when the universe pulls a fast one that turns out weirdly wonderful” or a cosmic Post-It Note™ that says, “Just trust me.” I am also a spiritual being, with faith in more than “the universe,” but that is not what I feel like writing about today. The older I get, the more I notice these moments, like déjà vu’s charming cousin who drops by unannounced with cake.
Serendipity Story #1: The Cookie Crush
It all started with butter. Lots of it. I was a poor college student who was living off of tips and had no time to date. But none of that mattered because I had a crush – a big one. He was tall, kind, and suspiciously quiet around me, which of course meant I was certain he wasn’t interested. We’d met when I was his server during a going-away party, and we’d run into each other a few times at church, but conversations were mostly him saying “Hi” and me forgetting how words worked.
Christmas was coming, and I saw my opportunity in the form of cut out cookies, pecan fingers, baklava, and a couple other varieties I couldn’t afford but baked anyway. I told myself I’d give him some of them, when in truth I knew I was going to unload the whole tray like a sugar-coated Trojan horse. This was long before cell phones, when making a call meant stretching the kitchen phone cord into the living room and around a roommate or two. I had his number, which I’d obtained through entirely legal, if stalkerish, methods, and after pacing for a full hour, I finally picked up the phone.
Busy signal. I hung up.
And I kid you not, as I was hanging up, the phone rang. It was him. Him! Calling me. To ask me out on a date. And he hadn’t even gotten the cookies yet! I remember thinking, “Well, this is it. An actual God moment.” What else could explain that serendipitous crossing of phone lines? It was the beginning of something sweet. The cookies might not have won him over, but the timing sure did.
We’ve been married for 39 years.
I am buying our baklava now.
Serendipity Story #2: The Bookstore Breadcrumb
My dad was turning 85, and we decided to give him a “Dad Day.” It would be an entire day devoted to his favorite places around his hometown before Parkinson’s made that kind of wandering so difficult. He hated using a wheelchair, but we insisted he have his day, so we pushed him through the winding sidewalks and into the small, musty used bookstore he used to haunt.
It had that charming sense of barely contained chaos only a well-used bookstore can pull off; towers of bookshelves with ladders in a former shoe store. The air smelled glorious of paper books, and I’m fairly certain there was a cat perched somewhere near the poetry section, casting judgment on our choice of nonfiction.
Dad always loved big, beautiful coffee table books, and I watched as he slowly pulled a glossy, oversized book from the “Nature” section. When I took it from him to help him flip through it, something fluttered out from between the pages. It was a program from a Wildlife Society banquet held nearly a hundred miles away, and on the front was a drawing I recognized instantly.
It was my husband’s artwork, from 10 years earlier, back when he’d contributed a design for their door prize. Somehow, from the thousands of books in that creaky old store, my dad had chosen that one. The one holding a hidden piece of my husband’s past, tucked quietly into its pages like a secret. Love, as it turns out, leaves breadcrumbs; sometimes 10 years old and hidden in a used book store, waiting to be found.
Things That Don’t Happen by Accident (Probably)
We’ve all had them – those little moments that seem too perfectly timed to be pure coincidence. Maybe it was a stranger in an airport who handed you a piece of advice that stuck with you longer than your luggage ever did. Or your toddler who blurted out a phrase you used to say as a kid, right down to the dramatic pause and eyeroll.
Maybe it was the job that landed in your lap because you turned left instead of right, or the house you found because your GPS gave up somewhere outside of town. Maybe you struck up a conversation with your future college roommate at a gas station in Nebraska. Whatever the details, there’s something oddly magical about those split-second detours that end up shaping everything.
Serendipity: What Are the Odds?
I don’t think serendipity is random at all. I prefer to believe it’s something more; a quiet nudge reminding us to stay hopeful, stay open, and occasionally spend your entire grocery budget on butter and filo dough for a man who was, and still is, worth it.
Coincidence is statistical. Serendipity is poetic. One belongs in a math book, the other in a Nora Ephron movie. Coincidence is the universe shrugging. Serendipity is the universe slipping you a note that says, “Psst… you’re gonna want to pay attention to this one.”
And when I think of the phone ringing at just the right moment, or a dusty nature book revealing a hidden thread between my father and my husband, I can’t help but believe there’s more at play than chance.
So, here’s to fluttering pages and the people who call back right after you hang up. If you haven’t had a serendipitous moment lately, don’t worry. The universe might just be baking something sweet.
Let’s Talk About It:
Can you recall a moment when you’ve said, “What are the chances?” Do you believe in serendipity, “God moments,” or wildly improbable coincidences?
