Serendipity

Essay-inspirational


Serendipity

Serendip is the tranquil once-upon-a-time Indian-Arab-Persian name for present day Sri Lanka. This name, with its blue sapphire resonance was extant in Sinbad the Sailor’s day, that fabulist, happy-making never-never-time. And the name Serendip stayed, sparkling and glinting for aeons before the Portuguese invaded the tear-drop shaped isle they renamed Ceilao. Then the Dutch colonised Ceilao, calling it Ceylan before the British took it off the Dutch and renamed it a right and proper Ceylon.

But along the way, in the 18th century, Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford, the youngest son of a British prime minister, a writer of some 3,000 belle lettres, coined a word. In one of his letters to the British diplomat, Horace Mann, on January 28, 1754 he wrote “serendipity.” Most academics, while agreeing that Walpole coined the word, say that the concept of serendipity originates in the ancient tales of the Panchatantra and that the Three Princes of Serendip story, on which Walpole drew, is a derivative.

What is certain is that it is rare to find a word with such a charge of etymological curiosity. And if the word was just a word it might have done no more than entertain lexicographers and pedants because theirs is a rarefied craft. But no, serendipity began life saying it meant one thing while being taken for another. The Panchatantra brand of serendipity, with its earthy folklore origins, had much in common with the modern crossword in its cherchez le clueism. Serendipity the ancien, is definitely not about the sunny concept of happy coincidence we believe it to be.

Let us look at the story that inspired Walpole to coin the word. You’ll see that the story is about being clever and deductive like Sherlock Holmes in his hat. It is called The Three Princes of Serendip:

Three goodly young princes were travelling the world in hopes of being educated to take their proper position upon their return. On their journey they happened upon a camel driver who inquired if they had seen his missing camel. As sport, they claimed to have seen the camel, reporting correctly that the camel was blind in one eye, missing a tooth, and lame. From these accurate details, the owner assumed that the three had surely stolen the camel, and they were subsequently thrown into jail. Soon the wayward camel was discovered, and the princes brought to the perplexed Emperor of the land, who inquired of them how they had learned these facts. That the grass was eaten on one side of the road suggested that camel had one eye, the cuds of grass on the ground indicated a tooth gap, and the traces of a dragged hoof revealed the camel's lameness. (Adapted from The Peregrinaggio [1557] in Remer, 1965)

From the above story Walpole created serendipity to refer to the combination of accident and sagacity in recognizing the significance of a discovery (Remer, 1965, pp. 6-7). Other people since have defined serendipity as:

• The faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.
  
• Accidental sagacity; the faculty of making fortunate discoveries of things you were not looking for.
  

This, of course, screams of the Biblical concept of “Providence” and the action of the unseen hand of God. It implies that what is “happy coincidence” to us is actually God’s foreknowledge of all things and his nudge is to see that his Supreme Will is realised. Also, the reason that we run into happy coincidences as opposed to their converse is also not accidental but quite in keeping with His divine blue-print. Good discoveries and consequent good outcomes happen because God wants it that way. God has an understandable vested interest in preserving and controlling the universe and all that is in it after all!

But where there is faith can rationality be far behind? The rationalists, scientists, proof-fact-loving-polloi have joined the debate. These good folk suggest, in a there are no mysteries tone of voice that there is nothing serendipitous in the naïve and credulous Walpolian sense. Full of the self-righteousness of the godless they aver that it’s understandable, in an artist, an author who wrote Gothic horror novels too viz. The Castle of Oranto (1765), but just not “right” thinking. To these people, the apple that dropped on Newton’s head was serendipity only in the sense that the eureka moment was an encounter as in planned insight meets unplanned event leading to meaningful and interesting discovery…

The last time this pot was stirred in an archetypical sense was in the 19th century when a naturalist by name of Charles Darwin advanced his Theory of Selective Evolution. It upset a lot of the faithful who didn’t want science monkeying around with the Doctrine of Creation. Today, most of us realise that Science too is an evolutionary ape and yesterday’s inviolate truths have a way of turning into today’s drollery. Also, if we look at the rumbling fault-lines between the adherents of the world’s great religions we see that they are fretting and fuming about the fact that it is trust that is the missing stake. And what is trust if it isn’t an act of faith?

So to me, it all comes back to Faith. Serendipity is indeed the hand of God. It is a good providential and fortuitous energy. It made Alexander Fleming see the possibility in the mould developed serendipitously on a staphylococcus culture plate. The mould, Fleming saw, had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment and he found that a mould culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.


Serendipity. With its alchemy of insight, chance and discovery tells us we are being watched over and that we are not alone. In our moments of despair, it is the hope inspired by what may lie around the bend that keeps us going. It makes us laugh out loud when we triumph and everything looks so obvious, so simple when we breakthrough! There’s the lovely anecdote about the illustrator Rene Goscinny who wrote and Albert Uderzo, the writer, who drew - to create the beloved ASTERIX series. This phenomenally successful collaboration was inspired by the serendipitous twist of this role reversal.

Sometimes serendipity reaches out beyond the grave. Think of Anne Frank’s cloth bound diary thrown on the floor by the Nazi soldiers who came to take away the Franks after their hiding place was discovered. Something made Anne’s friend, Miep Gies, go to the empty rooms just after the arrest, pick up the diary Anne loved to write in and put it away in her desk to give back to Anne, she thought, after the war was over…

And sometimes serendipity can be quirky. Columbus is acknowledged as the discoverer of “The New World,” which he thought was India, when he sailed West on behalf of Spain. His voyages are well documented but those of his contemporary and fellow Italian also voyaging on behalf of Spain are less so. There is some doubt about whether Amerigo Vespucci actually sailed on his first voyage to the continents that came to be named after him. If he didn’t, and was merely the owner of the ship that sailed to South America in his name, then his second and third voyages took place after Columbus got to the Caribbean. Still, serendipity as we can see, has found a berth for them both.

Perhaps the most touching example of the power of serendipity in recent times is illustrated by the film Forrest Gump (1994). This timeless film that reprises the value of faith is immensely inspiring. Here is Forrest Gump, a man with an IQ of 70, 5 points below the “normal” cut-off, who wears callipers on his legs in childhood, and knows how to love. It is this same man in adulthood who becomes a star football player, learns to run like the wind, become a Medal of Honour winning war hero, a very successful shrimp farming businessman with shares in a “fruit” company called Apple, a ping-pong champion, a steadfast friend and a constant lover. The hand of God. Serendipity. His name may be Forrest Gump but “that’s all I have to say about that.”

(1,388 words)
Title: Serendipity
By Ghatotkach
June 23rd, 2005