Life, Luck, Love and Venn Diagrams

Post by Jen @ Life on the SONny Side

I am absolutely obsessed with stories of fate, destiny, luck, serendipity, and synchronicity. You know…tales that begin with, “My alarm didn’t go off that day for the first time in five years…” and end with “…and that’s how I got to make out with Mark Paul Gosselaar.” What?! It could happen.

Let me give you an even better idea of what I mean:

Life magazine ran a story in March of 1950 about “Beatrice’s Choir”. They reported that 15 people were supposed to meet at 7:15pm for a choir rehearsal in Beatrice, Nebraska. Apparently, each member had been delayed for various reasons…car trouble, forgetting the time, etc. At 7:25pm, there was an explosion at the church because of a natural gas leak. The building collapsed into nothing more than rubble. Not a brick was spared. Researchers estimated the odds of every single choir member being late to that rehearsal as a million to one. And yet it happened. Was it an act of God? A second chance from the universe? Or could it really have been nothing more than an incredible coincidence?

 

My heart…the one that believes in all sorts of magic, just won’t let me believe that something like this is a result of nothing more than chance.

I didn’t read The Secret. I’m not sure that “If I build it…they will come,” and I super-duper hope that there is nothing to the premise behind those whack Final Destination movies. (I still can’t listen to John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” without starting to sweat.)

I sure as sassafras don’t claim to have all of the answers. Although, how I wish that I did! But, I DO believe that the universe probably has a plan. It probably has lots of them. I like to think that it sends us signs, and signals, and opportunities for second chances every single day. We just need to pay attention. We have to be brave enough to send our wishes and dreams out into the great beyond. We have to say them out loud. We have to listen for the answers. We have to do some of the work too.

I remember being 25 and really lonely. I remember deciding one day that enough was enough. I started to date like a mad woman. I didn’t just go out to the bar and hope that some non-dirtbag would hit on me, and that we’d live happily ever after. I started asking everyone that I knew to introduce me to good, available men in their lives. I started actively looking. I went out on hundreds of dates. No exaggeration. It was exhausting. Some of them were worse than I ever imagined. Some of them were sort of encouraging. One of them was simply off-the-charts-perfect. He was the reason that I stopped being lonely. But, more importantly, so was I.

 

Naturally, there’s a cosmic twist that involves us having met years earlier when we were both already in relationships…this time he winked at me and we were both single…turns out that some of my best friends at work used to be some of his best friends where they all used to work together. We had been circling each other in some weird sort of Venn Diagram for years, until one day that we both finally ended up in the center of it…and messy make-out sessions and marital bliss ensued.

 

My point…yes, I have one…is this…the universe wants to help us out…it’s full of glitter and twists of fate, and heart-stopping miracles…some days it’s going to stop a meteor from crashing into your old Ford Taurus…but other days you still have go get the oil changed and the tires rotated if you don’t want that hunk of junk to explode on your way to get groceries. It’s a partnership. A yin and a yang. Don’t be lazy about it. Pay attention. Step away from the slot machine…that sort of luck is the rarest of all.

 

Put it out there. If you seek happiness, do things that make you happy. The real beauty of synchronicity is that it doesn’t give a shit about your timeline. It brings you gifts, and luck, and answers when they are supposed to find you. You may as well make the best of it in the mean time.

Also, we simply don’t get things that we aren’t willing to ask for. Start asking. And be polite about it.

One of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Gilbert, wrote, “I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine.”

If you’re sick of the shade, move your lazy butt out of it. If you’re really lucky, and the universe has got your back like I think it does, it’ll probably make sure that enormous speeding bus doesn’t run the red light at your crosswalk. Seems fair to me.

…And if you happen to be on your way to choir practice, and that damn Taurus gets another flat…please keep in mind that Lady Luck just might be doing you a solid.

Image courtesy of:  http://www.zazzle.com/you_me_awesome_venn_diagram_personalized_invite-161630761453844692

 

**P.S. Venn Diagrams are literally the only thing that I retained from my high school statistics class…well, that and a D- on my report card. LUCKILY, I’ve somehow still managed to become a fully functioning adult…Kids, don’t listen to me! Math is important…until you reach 9^thgrade…anything after that is just butta…**