On January 28th, 1794, English author Horace Walpole drafted a letter to Horace Mann, an envoy in the service of King George II. Within the correspondence, Walpole first employed a word of his own creation, a charming word inspired by a largely forgotten collection of tales called The Three Princes of Serrendip. Serrendip was the old Arabic name for the island of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. The book had been published over two centuries before by a Venetian printer by the name of Michele Tramezzino. The stories chronicled the journeys of the island monarch's sons who, according to Walpole, "were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of."
The word that Mr. Walpole framed that winter's day was "serendipity."
Mr. Walpole's word has come to have a somewhat broader meaning than he first intended; serendipity is defined as "a 'happy accident' or 'pleasant surprise'; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it." Some wordsmiths, in the spirit of Mr. Walpole, restrict the use of the word "serendipity" by a narrow set of criteria; so narrow, in fact, as to rob the word of its whimsical quality.
One example of serendipity, from my perspective, is a story that was born of John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan on March 30th, 1981. As Reagan exited the Washington Hilton Hotel, Hinckley fired six shots at the President in less than two seconds. Among the shots that landed, one bullet was taken in the chest by Secret Service Agent Timothy McCarthy, who used his body as a shield to protect his charge; another bullet ricocheted off the armored limousine and pierced the President's left underarm, grazed a rib and came to rest in his lung, less than an inch from his heart--even as Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr quickly, violently shoved the President into the car.
Sometime later, after President Reagan made full recovery, he was joined at his Santa Barbara ranch by Agent Parr. Peggy Noonan, former speechwriter and Special Assistant to President Reagan, recounts the meeting in her lovely book, When Character Was King, A Story of Ronald Reagan.
As the President and his Secret Service agent conversed, Parr recalled how, as a little boy, his father had taken him to see a movie called Code of the Secret Service, about the exploits of a heroic agent named Brass Bancroft. Young Jerry Parr was hooked. "That's why I became a Secret Service agent," he told the President...And the serendipitous piece of the story?...It was a young actor named Ronald Reagan who played the role of Brass Bancroft and who inspired the young boy who would one day save President Reagan's life.
I'm fascinated by serendipity--"a happy accident...finding something good or useful without looking for it"--but with one refinement. I choose to believe that the serendipitous is neither accident nor luck. So, with a nod to Horace Walpole and his creation of "serendipity," I long ago created my own word...  Do you have a personal example of provendipity that you might share? Who would you have to be to live from a place of provendipity? More curious? Aware? What else?
Allow me, please, to offer a recent example in my own life...
I love old black and white movies. One of my favorite actors of the period was Fred Astaire. Some three weeks ago an old Astaire movie called A Damsel in Distress was released on DVD for the first time. I'd never seen it, but I immediately placed an order for the film. One morning, a week later--as I recently wrote--we lost one of our two dogs, Gracie.That afternoon, sitting with our loss, I suggested to my wife Kathy and her mother Barbara, that we sit down and lose ourselves in an old film. Kathy brought me the unopened Amazon.com package that held A Damsel in Distress. It was a lovely distraction. For an hour and a half our sorrow was drowned in laughter. About halfway through the movie, we found ourselves delighting less in Fred Astaire and more in the antics of two of his co-stars, George Burns and Gracie Allen. With a sudden sense of provendipity, we realized that Gracie Allen, the one for whom our Gracie was named, was--for a time--turning our grief into mirth. How cool is that?
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