AFTERTHOUGHTS ON SERENDIPITY
Just in case you missed any of my afterthoughts on serendipity…
Simon & the aliens
As I reflected on serendipity, I realised that most of the really important events in my life were the result of chance encounters.
Take the story with which I started my Substack: Simon and the aliens. The year was 2002. I was about to start a creativity workshop in a company that dealt with data insights. I had arrived early to get the room set up so that I could then chat with people as they arrived. Coffee and biscuits had been laid on, and I had just poured myself a cuppa. As I turned round to survey the early arrivals, a chap appeared at my side.
“I’m so looking forward to this workshop,” he declared, enthusiasm and anticipation gushing from every aspect of his being. I was about to respond, when...
“Yes, I haven’t been creative since I was 10 years old,” he continued, each word tripping over the next, in a bid to escape.
You will remember that he was reluctant to share his story. However, perseverance is my middle name, and I winkled the story out of him. And I have used it ever since to illustrate my core proposition: we are all innately creative but life events have conspired to make many of us believe otherwise.
It was this moment that ignited my ambition to understand the dynamics of this deplorable situation.
24 years later, I have taken Simon’s story all over the world, I’m a Doctor of Creativity, I’ve completed the manuscript for my book about creative identity, and now I’m doing my Substack, Creativity 4 Life.
Just think... What if Simon had been sick that day? What if he’d been waylaid on his way to speaking to me? What if I’d been unable to extract his story? What if I’d not won the pitch to do the creativity workshops?
One chance encounter, the intersection of two different worlds, and nothing would ever be the same again.
That’s serendipity for you.
The first touch of serendipity
I wracked my brains for what might have been the first time that serendipity changed the course of my life. If you think about it, that’s a pretty big ask.
I suspect it was having Mr Wakefield for Art in my third year of secondary school (see the fifth post regarding the importance of a growth mindset). I went into year 3 with no expectations or aspirations for Art, and I exited that same year knowing, deep inside, that I was creative. I, of course, had no idea where that might take me in years yet to come, but there was a quiet certainty that it was important.
That’s one of the things about serendipity. It often needs time to bear fruit. Instant gratification it is generally not. I guess you might choose to take a different route home and stumble across a great new restaurant. For me, that is good fortune, but not serendipity. In my view, serendipity has greater portent. When I think about serendipity in my own life, I relate it to momentous events, turning points, and tipping points. The change may be gradual, but life is not the same afterwards (in a good way).
However, once touched by serendipity (or perhaps I should say once its presence has been noticed), a heightened awareness follows, and it becomes apparent that it has influenced many aspects of life.
What might not have been
I completed my secondary education at Hamilton Academy, just south of Glasgow, Scotland. Each year, Principal of Music, Peter Mooney, staged a Gilbert & Sullivan opera. Mr Mooney (he was always Mr Mooney, or sir) was an important person in Scottish musical circles. He was the Director of the world-renowned Glasgow Phoenix Choir from 1955 until his death in 1983. The Academy was lucky to have him. He was a man who commanded great respect. He never demanded it. It was given willingly.
In my final year, the opera was The Mikado, a satire about British institutions, society, and politics, but set in Japan to soften the criticism. My best friend, Alastair, was keen to participate, but not so keen to go to the auditions on his own. Somewhat reluctantly, I agreed to keep him company. To our complete amazement, we were both selected to join the boys’ chorus.
In parallel, there was a girl in the year below called Lesley Shearer. I don’t remember exactly when I fell in love with her, but she was out of my league. So, I admired her from a great distance, but never plucked up the courage to do anything about it. Imagine my surprise (actually, shock would be closer to it) when she appeared at the very same auditions. She, too, was an unwilling participant, there to keep her pal Mae company. By her own admission, she couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket! They were duly selected for the girls’ chorus.
Rehearsals were after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At the first meeting, Mr Mooney paired up the chorus boys and girls, and we began learning the parts we would play and the songs we would sing. It was all good fun, although our musical director enforced a quiet etiquette. He was determined to make each year’s performances the best they could be.
One evening in October, one of the boys in the chorus was misbehaving. Etiquette was not being observed. Without warning, and completely out of character, Mr Mooney pointed an accusatory finger at the guilty party and ordered him to leave. He then quickly reorganised the boy-girl pairings and carried on with the rehearsal.
Guess who my new partner was!
Like many awkward, socially inept 17-year-olds, I shuffled and mumbled and fumbled my way through all the subsequent rehearsals, and the six performances of the Mikado in the Hamilton Town Hall, without finding the pluck to ask out the woman of my dreams. Les eventually lost patience and asked me out at the opera party in the Angus Hotel. The rest, as they say, is history.
We celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in August.
That’s what I call serendipity.
The house that almost never was
Almost 20 years ago, Les and I decided we would buy a piece of land on the Isle of Harris and build ourselves a second home. This is no easy task in the Outer Hebrides, where most of the land is held under crofting tenure. This makes purchasing a piece of land a complex and lengthy undertaking. Find a desirable location (easy), locate the tenant (not so easy), approach the tenant (challenging), gain the tenant’s approval to decroft (the term for taking a building plot out of crofting tenure – almost impossible), get planning consent (super-difficult in our time, but a little easier nowadays), go through the decrofting process (sometimes taking up to 12 months), and finally build the house (differing degrees of difficulty, dependent upon whether you use a single contractor or separate trades).
Over a fair period of time, we navigated this torturous process, generally understanding the unwritten rules by getting it wrong the first time around. We jumped through hoops to satisfy the sometimes onerous requirements of the tenant. We had a deal on the table. That was the Friday before the Monday when we would make the payment.
He, a church elder, if you don’t mind, sold the piece of land to someone else over the weekend!
We were devastated.
I vowed never to set foot on Harris again.
Four weeks later, we travelled up to the islands again, to look at a property on Lewis, the next island north (although Harris and Lewis form a single land mass, and no one has ever explained to me why they both claim islandhood). So much for never setting foot...
We collected the keys to an old church from the estate agent. To say that it needed renovation would be like saying Mount Everest is a bit of a hill. We could see all sorts of possibilities, but it was the wrong project in the wrong place.
Somewhat dejected, we returned to Stornoway to return the keys.
As we were about to open the agent’s door, Les spotted a property in the window. It was located at the end of a single-track road, on the west coast of Lewis, with a loch in front and a sandy beach less than 100 metres away. It came with a piece of already decrofted land, and had one of those little stickers advertising that it was newly on the market. We read the particulars (as they call them here), looked at each other, knew we were thinking the same thought, and went inside. The property had literally gone into the window an hour beforehand.
We moved quickly.
The owners were off the island, but we persuaded the agent to give us access the following morning, before we were due to catch the Saturday lunchtime ferry.
We put our first offer in on the Monday, and requested that the agent remove the property from their window while we negotiated. (Bad move, I know, but you do what you’ve got to do when you really want something.) The vendors recognised a pair of smitten buyers and drove a hard bargain. Four days later, the house and the land were ours.
Five years later, we began planning the construction of our very own grand design on that plot of land. Three years after that, we began the build. Nine months later, we moved in. Almost 10 years later, we still look out the window each day at the North Atlantic breakers and pinch ourselves. We live here!
That’s what I can serendipity.
Identity process theory
When I started my PhD, I made a deal with myself: whenever I receive a request for research participants, I will respond in the positive. I knew that I would be making that request at some point in my research, and it seemed like a lovely opportunity to pay it forward. And so it was that I completed lots of questionnaires and sat through a series of online interviews. (It was COVID, and I live on the Isle of Lewis – so, it was never going to be in-person.)
On one occasion, I committed to participating before I had fully read and understood the information page. The researcher was investigating Identity Process Theory, and their request was for people who had not worn a mask during the COVID pandemic. I had, and so was ineligible.
I emailed the researcher, apologised, wished them luck, and enquired about Identity Process Theory.
It turned out to be one of just two foundational theories for my own research.
I had two wonderful supervisors, but neither was an expert in my field, and I was a sociologist working in psychology. So, my constant worry was, “Am I missing something fundamental?”
Who knows where I would have been had I not misread that request for participants?
That’s what I can serendipity.
What might have been
At 12.10 on Tuesday, 17 October 2000, the GNER service to Leeds eased out of King’s Cross Station, London. Thirteen minutes later, just south of Hatfield Railway Station, the train derailed while travelling at 115mph (185kph), killing 4 people and injuring 70 others. The train broke into three sections. The restaurant car turned onto its side and struck an overhead cable gantry. The 4 fatalities were all seated in the restaurant car.
I should have been on that train.
And I would have been sitting in my customary seat at the end of the carriage, right next to the restaurant car.
I had a meeting that morning in London, and had intended to return to West Yorkshire on the lunchtime service. However, I emerged from my morning meeting to find an unexpected invitation to meet a new client that same afternoon. I had a quick bite to eat, messaged my wife about the change of plans, and grabbed a black cab across London to the financial district. The meeting was convivial, with a promise to mobilise a first creativity workshop early in the New Year.
I jumped in another black cab and returned to King’s Cross. The first thing I always did on entry was check the departure board. This time, it was peppered with cancellations. I cursed silently, still unaware of the cause. I bought a coffee, sat down in the coffee shop, and took out my phone. There was a message from my morning meeting.
“Alisdair. I hope you’re alright. Please call.”
That got my attention. I flicked open my laptop and accessed my news app...
Later, very much later, I got back to West Yorkshire. But I got home, safe and sound. Others didn’t.
The following morning, I got an email from my soon-to-be new client. It began with these words:
“Happy to have saved your life...”
What might have been...
That was serendipity.