We All Need Heroes

SERENDIPITY

Chapter: Stories of Timing

Serendipity refers to looking for one thing and stumbling over something else that proves to be of greater value. Serendipity means a “happy accident” or “pleasant surprise”; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful without looking for it.
    The music group Roxette got their breakthrough in the United States in 1989. How? Because a college DJ played their song The Look continuously for weeks. The song topped the singles chart later that year, all thanks to this young DJ’s choice of music.
    Harry Potter books have made J. K. Rowling one of Britain’s wealthiest people and a whole generation are now familiar with the concept of Muggles, Hogwarts and Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station in London. When she wrote the first Harry Potter book, Rowling worked hard to get the book published. Twelve different publishing houses rejected her. Finally, Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a small publishing house in London gave the green light. The decision to publish Rowling’s book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury’s chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.
    The Swedish humor duo Filip Hammar and Fredrik Wikingsson shares a story over their podcast. When they visited the Apple store in New York, they opened up their website on various computers in the store. Filip recalls standing next to a little kid thinking: “What if he was to like one of our video clips, and his dad just happens to be Leslie Moonves and head of CBS? Then you never know what happens”.
    Whisky distillery Ardbeg happened to mix the contents of their own whiskey barrel of single malt whiskey with another distilleries single malt whiskey. The mixture was found to be successful and bottled and sold under the very name Serendipity.
    On the night of February 24, 1987, while working in Chile for the University of Toronto, Ian Shelton discovered a previously undetected bright light on a photograph of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Initially sceptical, Shelton went outside to look with a naked eye, and saw that the bright light was indeed present. His discovery turned out to be a supernova, the first visible to the naked eye since Johannes Kepler’s observation in year 1604. One of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century unfolded. At a lecture at Telus World of Science in Edmonton year 2007, Sheldon jokingly said that discovering a supernova tends to look good on an astronomer’s resume. It helped him get into graduate school and still makes good conversation at cocktail-parties. Sheldon’s discovery is a great example of serendipity. Someone else would have seen it first if he hadn’t. As it later turned out, an amateur astronomer in New Zealand saw it the same night.

Possible Moral
The triumph of coincidence. Serendipity or “fortunate discovery” stories teach us that things can change in an instant. Things aren’t always what they seem. Struggling and depressed one minute, and rich and happy beyond our wildest dreams the next. Sometimes we people fantasize about these scenarios, and sometimes they actually happen.


Story from We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish.
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