Fairy Dust

Serendipity, n
A combination of events which are not individually beneficial, but occurring together produce a good or wonderful outcome.

Easter Sunday 2020, my plan was to get up and go for a run at 8 o'clock.  An extra few minutes in bed somehow eats up half an hour and I didn't set out until 8.30.  In another house, my friend gets side tracked by the (and I use the word lightly) need to complete another level on a game before heading out for her run, and in a third, another friend leaves exactly when he intended to. Somewhere a little after 9am these random decisions combine in an act of serendipity, our paths crossing at the point where our three running routes converge.

Perhaps in different times we might have passed this off as co-incidence, we are all runners, we all live within 3 miles of each other and despite never having met either of them whilst out running before, sooner or later I was bound to meet at least one of them.  But when you are under lockdown and not able to arrange to meet any of your friends, bumping into not one, but two of them at the same time suddenly feels momentous and joyous and dare I say spiritual.

Flouting the three's a crowd rule, but offsetting this with at least a doubling of the prerequisite social distance, we stopped and chatted for a while, exchanging our experiences of life from within our respective bubbles, before parting - having first checked that we were all headed in different directions, such is the strangeness of the lives we now lead.

Upon arriving home, and in response to news that my friend's girls are struggling with what the gap in their schooling might mean for them, I called to mind a saying that in my head I attribute to the mother of a friend from University.  Clearly still awash with post run endorphins and my ethereal experience on (what is referred to in our house as) 'the tops', I decide to get in touch with this friend and tell her that whether my memory is correct or not, it has made me think of her and her mum, and I'm using it as an excuse to say hello.

In a turn of events which I think might count as synchronicity (the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection) she is in the process of arranging a virtual get-together with three other University friends and within an hour I am in a What's App group with people I've lost touch with and haven't seen together for 30 years. Imagining that this must be a little like internet dating, we've sent messages, exchanged photographs, discovered that we all have parkrun in common and are now preparing for our 'date night' this time next week by wondering what on earth to wear.

Wrapped up somewhere in this day of unexpected happenings was the pearl of wisdom I had thought to pass from one friend's mum to another friend's daughters: What's for you won't go by you.
It is a saying that I have taken solace from in the past, providing a twinkling of alternate thinking to counter my worrying for the future or desperate attempts to make something happen.

A twinkling?! Yes, like fairy dust. I don't want to think too deeply about it.  I don't want to take it's literal translation, examine it's meaning and then, having decided that I am not a fatalist, have to cast one of my favourite phrases aside.  Instead I want to believe that sometimes the right thing is out there waiting for me, I just have to be patient and follow what I know to be true. I don't always need to try to make sense of the world around me, on occasion I just need to calm my mind, let the Universe get on with it's magic and trust that it will all work out in the end - holding onto the fact that the world does indeed work in mysterious ways and that sometimes all you need to do to kick start a chain of happy occurrences is to go for that all important second 'last' wee before heading out for a run.

the tops