Seeking and Finding Serendipity

Weeks go by and I perceive that I’m not getting much done or creating what I want or even having memorable experiences. Everything is stuck between conceptualization and implementation. My head suggests I’m not doing enough or I’m doing too much, and my heart knows that sometimes it’s okay to just float, but now I need to focus on my psychic survival.

My first approach typically is to do more, engage with others, have dinner with colleagues, visit new places, try new recipes, and journal assiduously. The illusion is that doing more will generate more energy, more creativity, and more inspiration. I write down endless lists of all I desire to do, be, or feel, journal entries and daily affirmations abound, and visioning is part of the daily drill, but the more I do, the faster I spin, the less that gets accomplished. I’m hooked on the wrong voices that tell me to work harder, longer, do more, time is running out, opportunity rarely knocks and you’ll miss it anyway. Something significant is brewing, but I just don’t know where I left the key.

Full stop. Exhaustion takes over. Those voices go quiet. I stop listening. I hear that little voice inside me. It’s whispering, but if I listen really hard it tells me to sit, to stay, be still. Stop overthinking, let go of anxiety, fear, and stress.

Release. Let go. Let God. Don’t worry. Be one with all, be one with the world, hear what really is, and let go of the way you thought it has to be, or what people believe is helpful to say. I embrace that silence, and the emptiness I have been experiencing becomes less empty. Life and nourishment are all around, the air pulses with energy, and all is one. Everything feels fresh, new, and good. I walk down the street and someone smiles, my neighbors wave, and the breeze blows. My heart beats in my head, I feel integrated, at one.

The trickle of things possible suddenly becomes real. A man in a truck stops when he sees me and asks if I need a handyman. I look at him and smile. Yes! I said. He gives me his card. How did he know? Did the universe just do that? I ‘d been collecting names for months but failed to complete a call to anyone. I’d turned the corner. Serendipity is now operative. And all I had to do was not much. Be open. No fear. All will be given unto you.

Back home. I turned on the TV. Instead of the news, I went to some talk channels. And there he was. An author whose books I loved. Talking about a book I was reading by another author. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Chinese sci-fi. Making this even more interesting ten minutes later I read another random article about a well-known actress and in the last paragraph she mentioned the same book and that she was producing it as a TV show and that it was one of President Obama’s favorite reads. What was going on? Was this Artificial Intelligence advertising or was it the Universe validating my affirmation that I be shown what I need to read in my genre?

Serendipity, synchrony, pulses from our collective creative unconscious, tailored exactly with meaning for me have been flowing around me all week. I went to dinner with a friend and she mentioned the Birdland Jazz Club in New York City where she was going to see a singer and friend who was playing a show there in the fall. I told her that my husband and I were in that same club in NYC almost ten years ago when we got a call about the birth of our granddaughter back in Hollywood, and everyone around us toasted our good fortune.

It gets better. When we went online to look up the singer/friend it turns out she was playing a theater that evening in Milton, Delaware the town where my father lived at the end of his life. Looks like I need to go to that concert at Birdland in the Fall. It’s calling.

The next day I got another call, this one from old friends and colleagues from long term a project in Africa. A visit from them is soon and I’m lining up contacts and connections here in LA, one of whom I, serendipitously, sat next to the other day at a large public event.

So, when it rains it pours. I go back to what a mentor said to me years ago when I was also at a crossroads regarding where I was heading. The gist of what he said was: trying too hard to direct where you are going sometimes impedes your journey. Take a time-out. Go to the beach. Go fishing. Take a ride. Relax, let go, and do something else. Don’t think. And not long after, everything that you need will come right into your consciousness, and you will know exactly what is yours to do.