Serendipity

I was recovering from the worst hangover of my life on the French Riviera when I met her.

The Promenade des Anglais stretched out in front of me, all azure water and white stone, and I was trying to make sense of a vacation that had gone sideways in every possible way. My journal was open. an attempt to process the disappointment. when she sat down on the bench next to me.

She had eyes that shimmered like a stormy sea.

We started talking about nothing and everything. The kind of conversation where trivial observations about the weather slide effortlessly into meaningful discussions about what we wanted from life. There was a natural compatibility to it, a rhythm that felt less like two strangers meeting and more like two old friends catching up.

Over the next few days, we snorkeled in hidden coves, hiked through lavender fields, and talked until the Mediterranean sun dipped below the horizon. Each moment felt borrowed from someone else's life. too perfect, too cinematic to be mine.

But as the connection deepened, so did the awareness of its expiration date. We both had flights departing the next day. Different cities, different lives, different futures.

"Maybe you needed to get lost to find yourself," she said on that last evening, the words landing somewhere between observation and benediction.

We parted with mutual understanding and a thought that still lingers: the world is a pretty small place.

I think about serendipity a lot now. How the best things in life often arrive uninvited. How leaving room for chance. for the unplanned, the unscripted, the gloriously unexpected. is perhaps the bravest thing you can do.

You can plan every detail of your life and still miss the moments that matter most. Or you can show up, hungover and journaling on a bench in Nice, and find something you didn't know you were looking for.

Leave room for serendipity. It tends to show up when you least expect it.