Choose to Take the Journey

Tang Dynasty. A Chinese emperor in Chang’an, fearing death, commissions alchemists to create an elixir of immortality. Sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal are combined to form “fire medicine.” While not granting eternal life, fire medicine is found to be a useful fumigant to kill insects before its martial potential becomes clear. Gunpowder is born. Under constant threat of invasion, especially by Mongols to the north, the Chinese create gunpowder weapons: the gun, cannon, flamethrower, rocket, multi-stage rocket, bomb, land mine, and eventually, the machine gun. The serendipitous discovery of gunpowder is hailed as one of the “Four Great Inventions,” ushering in the age of “hot” warfare.

Nineteen Twenty Eight. A Scottish bacteriologist, on holiday with his family, returns to his untidy basement lab in London. He notices that one of his Petri dishes, inadvertently left open on a bench in the corner of the room, is contaminated with a fungus that destroys bacteria. Penicillin is born. Subsequent development and mass production leads to its use in the treatment of wounded Allied soldiers during World War 2. The serendipitous discovery of penicillin revolutionizes medicine, ushering in the modern era of antibiotics.

These moments were brought to you by: Serendipity. And even if you are (probably) not an alchemist or a bacteriologist, you can still reap tremendous benefits by increasing your exposure to serendipity. How?

Tinker.

Be a child again and experiment without focus. Explore without aim. Embrace fierce trial and error, and Serendipity, she will find you–like the little blue fairy who found Peter Pan. Compare my divergent writing style for the following posts:

Million Dollar Mouthpiece
Overcome Fear of Rejection
Accept Things as They Are
Giving Up is Not Realistic

I practice because I want to increase the depth of my writing, but I tinker with it because I want to increase its berth. You never know when a post may go viral (probably not this one).

The Bell Curve

The blogosphere hums with talk of bell curves these days, especially the HBD corner. But just because an idea becomes more well-known does not make it any more applicable. If you reflect on your life, you’ll find that almost everything of moment happened serendipitously–antisocial (albeit eyebrow-raising) “discussions” of the bell curve rendered irrelevant by logical extrapolation. Human lives do not fit neatly into a Gaussian distribution, nor does your life in particular. All it takes is a single…

Curve Ball

Curve balls get thrown. Mother Nature and Zeus (if you believe in Him) would not have it any other way. If not for a certain serendipitous meteor hurled from Mount Olympus, surely the stronger (and scarier) dinosaurs would have outcompeted our scroungy mammalian predecessors.

How do we protect ourselves from a similar conflagrant fate? For this, I turn to an esoteric technique developed by an ancient race: The Americans (of which I am a proud member). It is called–wait for it–“Don’t put all your eggs into one basket” Method. The DPAYEIOB Method can be summarized as follows:

1. Shit happens.
2. Given that, diversify your investments so you’re not left with nothing if your basket is either dropped or stolen. Regular readers, at this point, may be reminded of my “Start in the Middle” philosophy. Indeed, DPAYEIOB Method and SITM Philosophy may share a common psychologic origin.*
3. Once you have your fail-safe, that is, your insurance policy against curve balls, chase down your dreams for Zeus’ sake! Tinker. Experiment. Have fun. And if Serendipity should find you, make sure you read my blog so you know how to get that girl!

*For my international readers: We Americans like to use acronyms because it lends credibility to an argument.