Little Signals, Fortunate Accidents and Serendipity
Somehow, a week before Christmas, I found myself ill and bedridden grappling with the consequences of living in the modern plague. It was then, on an unassuming Saturday night, with the fresh contactless Chinese delivery by my side on the wooden coffee table, I watched Serendipity for the fifth time within the past two months.
I usually kept my sappy romantic comedy films at arm’s length after watching it once but for some reason, I became one of those crazed, hopeless-romantic addicts. I blamed it on the mysterious virus perhaps ravaging the logical side of my brain for the night.
Serendipity sits in the hidden gems closet for Christmas movies (next to The Family Stone). The film takes on New York moments, missed connections, and a whole lot of questionable new age-isms. It’s a helpless ode to messy rom-coms where two selfish strangers fall in love in New York City even though they’re deeply committed to their respective partners. And here I was isolated and fatigued, falling in love with the movie (and John Cusack) for another hour and a half.
And maybe more than Cusack, I fell in love with the dialogue. Dialogue that sounded insane at first but it came with such chaotic force just like the atmosphere of New York City, where you can’t help but lean into it with every fiber of your being.
So when the film ended (as they always did), I was left with two pieces of dialogue that swam around my mind wanting a place to rest.
Life's a mess, Sara. It's... it's chaos personified.
Molly Shannon - Eve
Life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, but rather, it's a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan.
Jeremy Piven - Dean
Initially, I thought the two quite literally contradicted one another. But then I thought to myself, what if they could exist together? Life is chaos personified but chaos itself can manifest in a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan - no?
But I guess the real question is this: can chaos be or at least feel intentional? Hmm. In my mind at least, chaos gets a bad rep. Maybe I’ll come back to this thought once it’s fully fleshed out or maybe I’ll leave it here to freely float in this digital space.
In any case, I wrote the word “serendipity” down in my journal along with a list of synonyms I liked.
Little signals
Fortunate accidents
Fate
Divine decree
Predestination
Chance
Luck
Destiny
Kismat
Most, if not all of these words meant an event (or a course of events) that would inevitably happen in the future. In my life, most of these “events” were strangers.
If life is simply chaos personified then strangers are the vessels of chaos.
The idea of how meeting one stranger can change the course of my whole life never fails to charm me. I think it’s magical.
Whether it was my partner, roommates, or best friends - in spite of the relationship and in spite of how and when it ends - we were all absolute strangers.
I met my best friends at a random Contemporary English class. We were desk buddies back then - not friends.
Yet.
I met my other best friends on a busy crosswalk in my college campus while the sound of drunk freshmen around me echoed through the streets. We were exchanging Snapchats - not friends.
Yet.
I met my love as a stranger in an apartment that felt like home on a cold Saturday night, tequila bottle in hand. He shook my hand and laughed at all of my jokes - not lovers.
Yet.
And yet, as blindly as I still believe in this chaos of little signals, fortunate accidents, and serendipity, I am more interested in the after-effects of it all.
I want to capture the exact moment where someone slips away from being a stranger to just someone of importance.
But I can’t.
I truly don’t know where it begins as hard as I try to remember. Does it begin with a simple “hello, my name is?'' or is it more transformative than that? Maybe I’ll leave that question here because I’m curious to know:
What do you call the moment where someone you once met is no longer a stranger?