Eulogy for Serendipity
How can we be found if we're never lost?
Let’s begin with an article by yours truly, published in MediaDailyNews back in April 2012, more than eleven years ago…
Get Lost: Siri, GPI and Why Me?
A journey is like marriage. A certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. — John Steinbeck
How can we take a wrong turn these days? How can we discover the twists and turns and back roads of serendipity when the fastest-route box is the default selection on MapQuest or Google Maps? How can we possibly learn anything if Siri and GPI forever prevent us from making any mistakes en route? How can we be found if we’re never lost?
Our obsession with the destination — with getting there as fast as possible — all but obliterates the lessons and rewards of the journey, and we wake up one morning to discover that we’ve become prisoners of efficiency. Perfect prisoners to be sure, but prisoners nonetheless. Turns out our only real mistake was not turning off our digital masters while we still had the chance.
I was in Newport, Rhode Island, recently with my girlfriend. We stopped for breakfast on Thames Street and sat at a table next to a tourist family: a mother, father and two teenage boys. The father and two boys were all heads down, completely immersed in their respective smartphones while the mother — with no one to talk to and no technology to conceal her boredom — sat quietly and fashioned a brave smile when she looked my way.
Her eyes, however, were plaintive and sad, and betrayed her silence as if to ask, “How do I compete with this?” She sat without a word, ill-equipped in the moment and quite beyond redemption.
A tourist as well, I was clearly outmatched by my own technology, an early generation cell phone and a digital camera. Turns out that two digital devices are at least one too many for yours truly. I was forever pulling out the wrong device at the wrong time, the phone when I needed the camera and the camera when I needed the phone. I understand, however, that the new smart cameras come with phones. Amazing.
If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, then what I know about digital technology must make me Public Enemy No. 1. Then again, who needs to know anything these days when we have Google and Wikipedia and Siri? Go ahead, ask me any question. I once took pride in things I knew, but that’s a harder claim to fame these days — especially when the primary lesson at the end of the day is how little I know about anything.
Meanwhile, my greatest achievement (with the exception of my daughter) is my undiminished sense of wonderment. I still see cathedrals in a grove of redwood trees (and vice versa), and still hear poetry in baseball each spring. Could be that I’m just easily and constantly amused, like all simpletons. Or maybe the result of too many drugs ingested over too many years.
But I think wonderment and happiness are basic choices we make as conditions of the journey, things we impose on our own worlds in our own time while our worlds impose conditions of their own, replete with riddles and rhythms we can’t possible fathom. We call the conditions that life imposes on us destinations, and perhaps the most meaningful question we can ask of them — good or bad — is, “Why me?”
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Fade out, fade in: September 30, 2023…
I stand by pretty much everything I wrote eleven years ago, except the girlfriend I mentioned is now my wife, and now I own a camera that actually comes with a phone. It sees for me and listens to me and talks to me and advises me and deceives me endlessly. Eyes, ears, and a voice, but with no discernible conscience or lick of common sense. Seems everyone has a politician in their pocket these days. Democracy in action, no doubt.
How can we ever be found if we're never lost in the first place? That’s the only question worth asking Siri or Alexa. Because they were designed not to invite but to obliterate serendipity, eliminate the thing we cannot plan for, the wrong turn that leads us to the most captivating backroads and adventures, and the errant moment that invites the most illuminating guests to our dinner tables. They were designed to steal our time and money and freedom — just like any other addiction to any other narcotic — and hold us ever closer to our lords and masters…
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. — Michael Corleone
The world seems large when it speaks to us on demand from our fingertips, but the world of Siri and Alexa — the world of things we think we know — is the smallest and most provincial of all possible worlds. We are told that all of this instant knowledge makes us wiser. But it doesn’t. Solomon, incomparably wise, understood…
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief. — Ecclesiastes 1:18
No matter how hard we search, no matter how diligent our plans, no matter how much technology we deploy, we never find the priceless things like hope and faith and love and inspiration and divinity on our journeys. Fortunately, the universe is designed such that we don’t have to. The universe is designed such that they find us: Journeys are paeans to serendipity, not evidentiary trails to confirm our pride and arrogance. Emily Dickinson said hope is the thing with feathers. If so, it arrives by design – like faith and love and inspiration and divinity – on the wings of serendipity.
Our job is to clear a landing strip in our hearts and between our ears for serendipitous things. Our job is to welcome them and prepare for them a warm seat at the table.
I recently lost a very dear friend, a kind and decent Palestinian family man with a gentle kiss of a soul, a curious mind, and a magnificent heart. My relationship with him helped keep me spiritually and intellectually intact over the past twenty years or so, and I miss him more than I can possibly describe. The launch of The Quality of Life Resistance Movement a few weeks ago was — in part — an homage to his spiritual and intellectual honesty, and the unconditional succor they offered to anyone who listened, yours truly not least. My prayer is to honor his memory and the memories of our friendship with what remains of my time on this wondrous planet, and by honoring what brought us together in the first place: serendipity.
I read your most recent essay, "Eulogy for Serendipity" with a smile on my face Jeff.
Since I retired in 2006 I have tried to pay homage to one of John Steinbeck's (1902–1968) last works, called "Travels with Charley, In Search of America" which was published in 1962.
I keep my copy of "Travels with Charley" in an easy to reach shelf in my library since it was published. At the time, I was a reporter and editor for the Bangor (Maine) Daily News.
During my early years in the Air Force and later at the newspaper, I devoured Steinbeck's books on what seemed like a weekly basis.
This year, "travels with Kohlrabi" began in August and ended in September.
My goofy hound dog and I took an enjoyable 45 mph drive from FL to lake Erie to WA driving on "US" highways rather than interstate roads in my pickup truck.
And yes, when I fell in love with my puppy at a no kill animal rescue seven years ago, he was already chipped and named Kohlrabi, a popular vegetable in central Europe!
The only bump in our journey occurred when I decided to take the literal "highways" through the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains.
A few days into that portion of my drive I started noticing symptoms of altitude sickness.
Which led to buying large bottles of water and turning on the altimeter display of my Garmin Navigation unit.
For the next three weeks I realized I had not seen an altitude below 5,000 feet!
The drive was majestic, which for me meant that at such altitudes my journey often felt as if we were in an airplane look down into the many beautiful valleys. But quite often the roads did not have guard rails, which forced me to slow down to about 35 or 40 miles per hour.
My truck has a diesel engine and thus had enough torque to scale the highest sections of my drive, which maxed out at 8,500 +/- feet, or about a mile and a half.
I stopped at nearly every scenic look out, and always took food out of my massive 65 qt Yeti cooler filled with one third dry ice. Kohlrabi and I drank a quart or more of water, and had a bit of food.
God created the views, but having my hound lean against my leg amplified my sense of calm.
However, I made sure to keep my 12 gauge close by and Kohlrabi on a leash. Several times he sensed a mountain lion or a brown bear long before my aged sense of hearing kicked in.
Thankfully I only fired my shotgun once to chase away a brown bear.
My brother-in-law recommended the cooler and said if I put enough dry ice into that cooler, my food and beverages might still be cold when I arrived at his house on the Olympic peninsula.
Donovan is prone to tall tales but when I parked in his driveway at the end of our western journey, sure enough my cooler still have a few nearly frozen bottles of beer.
We settled in his non vehicle garage where he has a gun safe that looks as though it came from our nation's gold reserve at Fort Knox.
He has enough fishing and hunting gear to fill an isle or two in the nearest Cabela.
Before one of his knees started to make angry sounds he rode a bicycle up into elk territory and always came down the mountain with a dressed out elk. He has since admitted he is getting old. His one concession? He now uses an battery powered mountain bike.
Did I mention he was a marine? And a nuclear qualified welder?
When he is not hunting big game, he'll be out on the Pacific ocean catching a type of tuna that has no limit on how many you can catch and keep, or be digging clams of various varieties.
I will add another note about our slow drive south on US 101 which follows the Pacific Ocean.
-30-
Dear Jeff,
It’s quite a great thing that you are doing. I mostly agree with your position, as I did with my father.
My father spent the last 30 years of his life seeking out The Meaning of Life.
The last 5 or 10 years he wrote what he had learned in a Real Life Novel, where he subtly sprinkled what he had learned.
It’s called Little Roads. It’s a very good, well written, worthwhile read. Read every word, Don’t skim or you will miss most of what he is saying.
I will gladly send you a copy of Little Roads. You will love it.
Sincerely,
Rich Dulebohn
I will donate to your writings some day soon