Last week while having lunch with a librarian friend, we wondered if associates schooled in electronic research were losing the serendipity of stumbling across new resources while browsing bookshelves.
But then I mentioned that I have seen serendipitous posts on social networks, like when two of my friends, unbeknownst to one another, post similar items back-to-back on my social feed.
I’ll give you a great example.
Last Sunday, January 4, 2013, a friend posted the Back to the Future meme that has swept through the social media sites.
Immediately below it, another friend posted a NYTimes aticle, “Why You Won’t Be the Person You Expect to Be.” Basically, the article was about a study that describes a phenomenon that demonstrates that we under-estimate our future selves. For example, when I was in law school, I could never imagined that I would be doing internet marketing for a law firm.
Ok, so that’s one serendipitous act. But it gets better.
So after sharing the meme to Facebook, I accidentally tagged the wrong friend for posting the NYT story. When I corrected the error in the comments of my Facebook post, the incorrectly tagged friend chimed in, saying “I was JUST looking for this online–I literally just clipped it from the paper!”
So if you can follow the spirality of all of this, basically I was having serendipity3 event.
And you want to know why I waited until now to post this? Well, I was reminded of the incident while watching the “Bank to the Future” episode from Raising Hope on Hulu, featuring the famous DeLorean and Christopher Lloyd.
All of this just confirms that synchronicity is every where. I need not fear its demise.
And with that, I will leave you with this video …