Sometimes, when it's harder than usual to sort of "stay aligned with myself and the Universe," a serendipity occurs to remind me to keep breathing! Yesterday, I experienced one that still seems truly remarkable. I'm in a tiny town in upstate New York, and was with out-of-town friends from another state. As we ate cones at the ice cream shop, a couple came in, and the woman looked vaguely familiar but I could not place her. But in a minute or two, she came up to me, and addressed me by name. I still couldn't quite make the connection, but we had one -- she and her husband had both been work colleagues of my brother who recently died, and had been at his memorial service five weeks ago, over eight hours away! (She remembered me better than vice versa, because I had spoken at the service.) They had no idea that our family had a deep, nearly 55 year connection to this village; they were simply enjoying a summer vacation a number of miles away deep in the Adirondacks, and had wanted to feel the wind off Lake Champlain on this hot day.
But this couple and I realized that this was really quite a "coincidence." All of us (separately) had been thinking about my brother over the last 24 hours, and this encounter would never have happened if anyone had delayed or pushed ahead the satisfaction of their ice cream cravings about 15 minutes! It truly seemed meant to be. It meant a lot to them to see a part of the world that had been special to him, and it meant a lot to me to realize how much people were still missing him.
Yet for me, the lesson in this wasn't specifically about these people, who I doubt I will ever see again. It was about how quickly life can change -- you can meet someone, have an experience, or have a life-changing inspirational idea literally "on a dime." In less-than-uplifting moments earlier in my life, I used to become even more rigidly "realistic" and schedule-oriented. Such-and-such "will" happen on such-and-such a day, kind of thing. I held on, for dear life, to what I "knew" was scheduled over coming weeks. If serendipities were blooming all around me, I was less likely to see them. Now, my eyes have adjusted to the light, and I often recognize the moment, and identify it not so much as a miracle, but as "evidence." Of course. There is a divine hand. It is not humorlessly pushing messages, learning and coincidences on us. Rather, serendipities are simply being scattered joyfully in our path for us to notice and allow. I wonder how many I'll see today?!
