Serendipity-A Fortunate Accident

“Life is not just a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences, but rather it’s a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan…..if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call 'Fatum', what we currently refer to as 'Destiny'”-Serendipity.

Two of my favorite movies of all time are Serendipity and Sleepless in Seattle.  I have always loved the idea of fate and destiny in a romantic sense, I just don't know if I believe in it the same way that I used to.  I understand destiny as the set of the circumstances we were born into and whether we decide to make the best of them; it is what we do with our life.  I think that fate is a result of both our actions or lack thereof and the things that aren't in our control, which really boils down to what God either allows to happen or when he decides to intervene.  I guess others' actions also control our fate as well.

As much as I love the movie Serendipity, the idea behind it is all a bunch of crap that we invented to make ourselves feel better about all of the stuff that happens to us that we can't control.  In reality, people find each other, fall in love, and then treat each other like crap because human beings are idiots.  I was curious to see what the opposite of Serendipity is and I discovered that William Boyd, a screenwriter and novelist, coined the term "zemblanity" to mean the opposite of serendipity.  I think that I am going to write a movie called "Zemblanity".  We'll see how people like this romantic comedy. 

One of my favorite things about Serendipity is that the writers put a Greek twist on the script, however, I don't understand how we got here and it doesn't really make any sense. "Here" being that the Greeks talked about fate and destiny being more than just finding a soul mate.  In fact, in all of the Greek plays I have read in the past, I have seen none of the concepts that are in the movies, Serendipity or Sleepless in Seattle.  The Greeks didn't seem to believe in happy endings and they certainly didn't talk about finding “soul mates”.  Correct me if I am wrong, but one's fate in Greek plays was actually very scary.  I mean, can YOU imagine being told that you would murder your father and marry your mother?  (Oedipus.)

If you look at the actual definitions of Fate and Destiny, they are pretty simple. 

Fate: Something that unavoidably befalls on a person. (Ok, so if you take a plane on the day it is going to crash, your fate is to die on a plane.  And it isn't IRONIC just because you have never flown before, Alanis Morissette.)

Destiny: Something that is to happen or has happened to a person; lot or fortune.  (I see nothing about actions in here, and so I have an issue with this definition because it implies that you don't have any control over what happens to you, or the way that you turn out.  I know a lot of morons who are morons because they acted like morons.  Their destiny was to be a moron because they chose to be stupid.)

Again, I see nothing about love or soul mates in these definitions. Neither of these definitions describe some cupid who is up there setting us up with our "soul mates" by making sure we grab a coffee five minutes earlier than we usually do just so we will run into our “prince” who happened to hit snooze a couple of extra times because he stayed up late the night before.  When did we turn Fate and Destiny into something romantic?  I have now capitalized them, as if they are people, which is how we treat them. 

Let's look at the Greek plays......Oedipus Rex was told he would kill his father and marry his mother and did.  Medea was replaced by a younger Greek woman and killed her children to get back at their father.  Clytemnestra plots Agamemnon's murder because she has been having an affair and then Agamemnon surprises her by bringing home a ho named Cassandra.  I mean, these are not romantic and someone always died, killed themselves, or lost someone they loved in the end.  The prophets usually had something disturbing to say....they didn't make sure that two people met and lived happily ever after.

In Serendipity, Jonathan shows Sara a group of freckles on her arm that look like the constellation Cassiopeia.  Cassiopeia was the vain queen of Ethiopia, wife of Cepheus.  She boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nerieds, or sirens, basically they are beautiful mermaids.  As punishment, she was forced to hang upside-down while clinging to the North Celestial Pole.  Jonathan tells Sarah that the queen made "one tragic mistake and paid for eternity".  Later on in the movie, Sara sees the constellation in the sky and that night she finds Jonathan.  I guess the correlation is that Sara made the tragic mistake of not giving Jonathan her number after it blew away….or did she?  Maybe that was meant to be.  Maybe if she would have given him her number and they got married, they would have died in a plane crash on the way to Barbados on their honeymoon and the breeze that carried away the phone number the first time really just saved their lives.....you see how ridiculous it is?  We will never know. 

We make a thousand decisions in our lives and it is interesting to think about how many different paths we can take based on a change in a direction or decision, but not really because we’ll never know how many bullets we dodge or what would have been better in our lives due to serendipity or zemblanity.  Even having said this, I still love the idea of Fate and Destiny and what's in the stars for us....it's fun and it reminds me that I was a little girl once, dreaming out my window. 

Jeremy Piven quotes this Greek philosopher in Serendipity, so I thought this was fitting....

"Don't demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well".-Epictetus