Serendipity

Ah, aptitude for stumbling upon a happy discovery quite by accident. My sister and I have been using this word frequently of late, an inside joke that was born from a moment when an esteemed professor used it with boyish giddiness to describe a chance encounter he had experienced. It's a bright, cheery concept and as long as I'm open and flexible I begin to have more of these uncanny near misses, chance meetings, and pleasant surprises. Now, I'm a skeptic. Really. OK, prone to fits of magical thinking from time to time, but usually I try to step back to take a more naturalistic view of events and coincidences. So I don't know what to make of serendipity except to laugh with delight and enjoy the little joke without expecting much more from it.


On Sunday my sis and I had plans to drive to Metropolis with friends. We would visit a Zen center there, then head to a local pub before making our way up a hillside to catch some soundwaves of a concert that rise up the slope above the heads of the ticket-buying crowd below.  D was late making it to my house and we were picking up a friend on the way. I got chatting and missed the exit, had to turn around to pick up friend S before we could really get moving toward our destination. I noticed a not-so-subtle current of anxiety rise: would we be on time? I didn't want to enter the center after everyone had begun to sit. My eyes would flit from the road in front of me to the clock on the dash. I'd make mental calculations. My clock is six minutes fast, so subtract that, guess how many miles we had to go, figure in miles per minute. We might just make it in the nick of time. Meanwhile, D's friend L calls while we're on the road. She thinks she's made it to the center, which in reality is hard to tell because it's tucked inside a renovated Art Space building. She'll wait outside until we arrive. I take the offramp into the city with five minutes before the Buddhists will begin meditating. I hang a left, then a left, then a right, hoping it's the right street, discover I've undershot by a block. No worries, I can just hang a left ahead and we're right there. Nope. It's right turn only, so I make a U-turn and drive back to the previous street. As we're driving back, S,  from the backseat, says, "Isn't that L?" We look back, and there sits L, texting away in the shade in front of the wrong building--the building that is exactly one block east of the Zen center. We stop, holler at her to get in, then get to the center, a little late, but there. It's quiet. A handful of meditators sit. I'm sheepish as I gingerly lift the velcro strap of my Tevas, but we tiptoe our barefoot way to some cushions and settle in barely detected.


What's the big deal, you say? No big deal, but there I was thinking I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, only to find out I was right were I was. Had we gone straight to the Zen center and not found L there the time spent tracking her down would have thrown us embarrassingly behind schedule and we might have simply slunk off to the pub with our tails between our legs earlier than planned to wash down our veggie burgers with a 25 oz. Hefeweizen, and we would have missed one of the most beneficial Dharma talks I've had the pleasure to hear.