Photo by lenia.
I often talk about Serendipity. People sometimes call me lucky and I don’t like that.
Being lucky means sitting at home hoping that one day you win the lottery.
Serendipity is more subtle and requires more effort than luck.
Anyway, here is the earliest use for the word from the Wikipedia entry for Serendipity:
“I once read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of: for instance, one of them discovered that a mule blind of the right eye had travelled the same road lately, because the grass was eaten only on the left side, where it was worse than on the right—now do you understand serendipity?”
But the best desciption for what Serendipity is comes from Julius Comroe:
“Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.”
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5 Responses to “Serendipity and a farmer’s daughter…”
Arnold Palmer (one of the best US golfers) once said after hitting a hole-in-one and spectators ‘accused’ him of being lucky: “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get”
It sounds better in Dutch.. “Serendipiteit is zoeken naar en speld in een hooiberg, en er uit rollen met een boerenmeid.”
Ben: good one!
[...] But as for me: I am a citizen of the long tail and proud of it. Like most open source projects and most blogs the most frequent response to my work is none. From time to time I will write a post that attracts a comment or two, and I have plenty of time to respond to each and every one. This is not a problem – it is something I enjoy because I can have real conversations with like minded people. This is the power (or jewel) of the long tail – I am frequently amazed by the rich and surprising connections that develop when I put my stuff ‘out there’ (serendipity). [...]
[...] *serendipity [...]