Serendipity

(This is a long one!)

I love to read the newspaper.  I love to see on my driveway words to read, things to think about, a connection to a world outside my own.

I tried giving it up to save a few dollars once; I could read it online, right?  Nope.  This lasted only a couple of days, but I held out for a few weeks before I restarted delivery.

I love the feel of the paper in my hands.  I love the regularity of having it delivered.  It's like a friend I can count on for a regular visit.  I love to hear the crinkle of the pages as the kids tear through it.  Once in a while they will read the local or national headlines but usually they are looking for news about their teams or the weather.

Why the weather?  When the boys were very young, they would try to wear shorts all year long...even during the ice cold parts of winter.  And, yes, I would worry that they would be too cold.  Instead of having to tell them every day to put pants on, especially as the weather began to warm (or cool), I made it a rule of temperature.  If the temperature was 60 or more they could wear shorts.  They got in the habit of checking the weather section of the paper every morning.  This was long before the days of temperature apps on our phones but still they check the paper occasionally.  I say occasionally because, as with many things, they are growing up & more able to prepare themselves for their days without my clothing suggestions!  Parker loves to be warm & feel snuggled so he wears pants more often then not.  Dallin usually wears shorts because he just gets too warm at school in pants, but with a hoodie for recess & the walk home.  Now I get to steer Kyralyn in the direction of the newspaper for our temperature rule. 

Occasionally I find gems in the newspaper that I want to keep, to read over and over.  But one thing I am NOT is a pack-rat.  When I'm done with the paper - to the recycle bin it goes!  I love that with technology I can record these gems without taking up space in a filing cabinet.

Speaking of gems, I have had one such article on my table for the past week.  Paul is back in town now & we need our whole table to sit down to dinner.  So I will record this particular article here, for me to read again...and food for thought for anyone else reading this post!

Before I paste the article, I will tell you that I enjoy it because it puts words to a "feeling" I've had for several years.  I also love this word:  Serendipity

A friend was lamenting the fact once as her babies were growing into themselves that she "couldn't control everything."  How much easier the days would be if we as moms could control our children's actions (but OH how awful that would really be!).

What about all the other facets of our lives, if we could control the outcome?  I've found myself on many occasions picking up the phone, getting a text ready, or ready to take a particular step in some direction, but I stop.  Over time, and through the course of other events, I find that by putting the phone down, deleting the draft of the text, or by taking a step in a different direction, I have actually found something much better than what I was looking for.

An obvious but simple example of this was Dallin's Black Belt reading program at school.  He was so excited to read as many books as possible to get the reward.  He finished the new Wimpy Kid book and went to school very excited to be on his way.

Unfortunately the teacher told him those books would not count.

Oh, was I upset!  We have worked very hard to encourage our kids to love reading.  Don't tell him no!  This will crush his excitement to read!  What was this teacher thinking, how dare she!

I formed an email in my mind, then decided to visit her in the classroom instead to talk about the faults of this reading program.  I stopped.  Slowly I realized I'd better just encourage Dallin to do what his teacher said, I'm sure she has a good reason.

We will have our own black belt reading program at home, that ALL books will count toward.

An interesting thing has happened in the several weeks since this occurred.  His excitement was not crushed.  The next time he brought books home from the library, they were on a 6th grade reading level, or higher.  He still loves to read & is discovering wonderful new stories!  He even picked up & finished one I'd given him several months ago that he just would not get into because it was too long.

I thought I could control something, but held back & found a result much better than what I was looking for!

Why serendipity is better than control

Published: Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011 6:22 p.m. MDT

By Linda and Richard Eyre, For the Deseret News

First in a series on three attitudes that are destructive and have negative impact on parenting and families and on three alternative approaches that go in the opposite direction of happier homes and more meaningful lives.

It's very natural to want to control as much of our lives as possible. Human nature desires to be in charge, at least of personal things, and to eliminate uncertainty, disappointment and surprise by taking over.

And indeed, control of our emotions and our appetites is a good and desirable thing.

The trouble is that most of us want to control much more than that. We want to control our circumstances, our children, our friends and our entire destinies. And it just isn't going to happen.

Oh, how we long for control. We try to control the events of our day by making lists and checking them off. We try to control our children by disciplining and rewarding them. We try to control our destiny by deciding who, where and what we will be. And when things go a different direction than our plans, our lists, our goals, we feel frustration and stress.

The history of the quest for control is essentially the history of the world. Human beings seem hard-wired for the desire to control things around us. In contemporary society, the instinct to control has been institutionalized by the whole industry of planning and goal setting and by the notion that control is what can bring us happiness. The good notions of setting goals and having plans and controlling oneself get expanded into the idea that we should be able to control and manage everything (and every person) around us.

In actual fact, we have control of a tiny island of things around which swirls a huge sea of uncontrollability and unpredictability, and our challenge is not to control this ocean, but to see its beauty and appreciate its waves and currents.

In the control mode, surprises annoy or irritate us because they may prevent our day from going exactly as we had planned it. Our friends annoy us because they don't do things the way we would. Our children bug us because they don't seem to want to be quite what we want them to be or to be interested in just what we think should interest them. And days when we don't get everything checked off our list get chalked up as failures because we have defined success as control.

The alternative attitude that we propose is serendipity.

This marvelous word has been oversimplified and even corrupted quite a bit lately in popular culture, becoming the name of ice cream stores, boutiques, clothing lines and even the title of a major movie. Serendipity is often defined as "dumb luck" or having something good happen to you by chance.

Its true definition, though, is much more interesting and quite extraordinary. The word was coined by a 19th-century English author named Horace Walpole, who loved an ancient Persian fable called "The Three Princes of Serendip" (Serendip being the early name of the beautiful, teardrop-shape island off the southern tip of India that the British called Ceylon and that we, today, call Sri Lanka).

In the fable, the three princes each go out in search of their fortune. None of them finds a fortune, but all of them, through their acute awareness and perception, find things that are better than a fortune — love, truth and opportunities to serve. They are able to make these discoveries because they notice things that other people miss, and thus find unexpected joys and opportunities.

Walpole, reading the fable, said to himself, "We do not have an English word that expresses that happy ability to find things that are better than what we think we are looking for." So he made up the word serendipity and defined it as follows:
"A state of mind whereby a person, through awareness, sensitivity and sagacity, frequently finds something better than that which he is seeking."

The fact is that we control so very little, and that God controls all. His gifts are all around us, along with his opportunities and incredible beauties, and we just need the awareness and spiritual sensitivity to see them. We can cultivate this awareness, and we can ask him for it. As we do, we use our agency to take the spiritual initiative that allows God to bless us and inspire us and guide us. Guidance is infinitely more valuable and more worthy of our pursuit and quest than is control. And serendipity is the mind-set or paradigm that can get us to guidance.

Control can seem motivating because it appeals to our lust for power and dominion. But it is a dangerous kind of motivation because it is unbridled by humility and can lead to the worst kind of pride.

With a serendipity paradigm, we are motivated by our desire to discover and deliver God's will into our lives. We begin to see life as a great adventure where our challenge is not to control but to perceive and to understand. We become as interested in learning to "watch and pray" as we are in learning to "work and plan," and the two sets of skills complement and enhance each other.

Richard and Linda are the founders of Joyschools.com and New York Times No. 1 best-selling authors who lecture throughout the world. Visit them anytime at www.TheEyres.com or at www.valuesparenting.com. This article and the three that follow are based on Richard Eyre's semi-private book "The Three Deceivers," which is available on Amazon.com either on Kindle or as a paperback book.