Monthly Musing – February 2022 – Serendipity

We are in the car on the way to school.  It’s raining – again – and we’re sitting at temporary traffic lights.  Not so small daughter is starting to get agitated as it’s the first day of her mock exams and she wanted to be extra-early.

A man holding a small girl’s hand walks past the car.  He’s carrying her school bag and she’s skipping along beside him.

A police car drives past us in the opposite direction.

The traffic lights change and we drive off.  Someone is coming out of their front door, someone else is opening their curtains, there are people at the petrol station filling their cars with fuel.

Whilst I am writing this, you might be making dinner, or watching TV, or out for a walk.  You could be doing any one (or a few) of a million things and even though we breathe the same air, walk with our feet on the ground and smile in exactly the same way, we are as different as could be.  We are all living our lives and we can never know exactly what someone else is doing.

It’s something that has always caught my interest.  My first job was in Manchester and involved commuting by train.  I loved the time of the year when it was dark enough to pass houses with lights on where they had not yet closed the curtains.  I was fascinated by those brief glimpses into someone else’s life and I often wondered if those people even noticed the train that sped past with people on board looking out of the windows.  For those few seconds, our lives touched and then they moved on.  I would never know the people in the houses and they would never know me.

So many people, so many moments, and yet there are times when by the most amazing of coincidences, people come together.  How many stories have we heard of serendipitous encounters for romance, for business, for friendship – and how does that work when even a split second later and they might never happen at all?

I can’t pretend this month that my thoughts are not coloured by world events; that “there but for the grace of God” isn’t something that has crossed my mind.  Any one of us could have been born into a different place and time, and we could be one of the faces on a TV news story.  Too much wondering about these things can lead your mind into down some strange avenues (or mine, at least) and so I focus instead on what good I can do from this place and time that I have been born into – something I was taught years ago at meditation classes and which really does stop the downward spiralling.

It will probably be raining again tomorrow and not so small daughter has another exam.  Someone else will be filling their car with fuel at the petrol station, people will wait at the bus stop and life may not seem so very different – but serendipity is a funny thing and who knows what may be in store for us and who we may meet, our lives touching only for a brief moment but changing forever in the process and perhaps, just perhaps, doing some good.

The sun is shining through a tree onto a garden filled with greenery. The Winwick Mum logo is in the bottom right hand corner.

 

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12 Responses

  1. Chris Murray says:

    A lovely gentle post that was just what I needed to read this morning after listening to the dreadful news from Ukraine. It is so easy to become overwhelmed by such devastating news and feel so utterly helpless in the face of such suffering but your reminder to focus on what good we can do in our own lives has really helped me to breathe a little more easily this morning. Thank you

  2. Brenda says:

    Such a beautiful post….thanks for sharing v with us.

  3. Irune says:

    Beautifully written post.

  4. Emma says:

    What a lovely blog post – you are so right. So many lives and when you consider how it can change in a moment. It is good to be thankful x

  5. Sarah Murray says:

    Thank you for such a lovely post. Good luck to your small daughter with her exams.

  6. Jools A says:

    Just lovely.
    It can be hard to hold on to the thought that there are beautiful, tender, kind, funny, gentle and generous moments going on all over the world at exactly the same time as all of the horrible, sanity defying moments that are so graphically reported in the media; thank you for the reminder.

    • winwickmum says:

      Especially as what is happening feels so close to home – it’s a sad thing, I think, that this particular situation touches us more than maybe some of the other humanitarian disasters have done for that reason, but it’s also heartening to see how much help is being offered xx

  7. Sharon Beauclerc says:

    A beautiful post. ❤️ So true. So glad I found Winwick Mum. Attic 24.
    The lovely people who comment and share moments in their lives. Is so wonderful. 🌸🌺💓

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