Creating serendipity and what it means to grieve

A few times a month, I go to the local park and leave copies of my favorite books in the Little Free Library.

If you’ve never seen one before, they’re the birdhouse-shaped box pictured above. It’s designed to give people a free way to find books to read. You can leave or take as many books from it as you, want free of charge.

When I was 16, I came across "The 48 Laws of Power" in one of these, and it changed the way I look at books, and in turn, the world.

That experience taught me the power of serendipity.

Put simply, serendipity happens when you find some insight or benefit when you’re not seeking anything in particular. Think about when someone said the exact words you needed to hear without even knowing it.

That’s serendipity.

Serendipity is the reason why I jumped into the water with random kids a couple weeks ago while I was on a walk.

It’s why I take the time to speak to interesting strangers, even if it sets my schedule back a little.

And it's why I leave my favorite books in Little Free Libraries.

Giving money or resources to those in need is a great way to give back, but something about giving people the means to change their lives is special to me.

While you can’t always control who is immediately in your life, you can always choose who you want to study or learn from through books and research.

Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene, for example, (to name a few) are 2 people I’ve learned a lot from despite never meeting them.

Here’s how the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca put it: “Choose someone whose way of life as well as words, and whose very face as mirroring the character that lies behind it, have won your approval.”

A few weeks ago, I left a copy of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking".

It's one of the most beautiful and raw memoirs I've read. It chronicles the year following the death of her husband.

I learned that while death comes suddenly and without warning, grief comes in waves and is rarely rational.

Death can convince even the least superstitious person to act irrationally.

But my words won't paint the picture as beautifully as Didion's, so here are some of my favorite passages from the book, and some of my thoughts on them.

Enjoy these potent reminders on the fragility of life.

Didion returned to those first four lines throughout the book to emphasize how life and death do not wait until you are comfortable. Life’s timing is indifferent to your plans or how you feel.

“Life changes in the ordinary instant” she later clarified.

This is not to suggest that you have no agency, but rather to remind you of which things you have agency over.

You control:

• What you choose to do within your lifespan, NOT the lifespan itself.

• Which tasks and projects you undertake, NOT which ones will be successful.

• How you respond to life’s stressors, NOT what those stressors will be or whether or not you are subject to them at all.

This reminds me of the quote Ulysses S Grant opens his own memoir with:

“Man proposes and God disposes.”

Throughout the book, Didion recounts the many times her grief disarmed her of her sanity.

The time when she…

• Demanded that she be alone the night following her husband’s death so that he could come back.

  • “I needed to be alone so that he could come back.”

• Felt that she couldn’t give away his shoes in case he returned

  • “I could not give away the rest of his shoes. I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need his shoes if he was to return. The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.”

• Convinced herself that she did not “sufficiently appreciate” certain things her husband did or said while he was alive. This point is especially interesting because throughout the book Didion displays the exact opposite. She loved her husband and she certainly appreciate every little thing he did or said.

  • “He who left the faint traces before he died, the Number Three pencil.”

The key to understanding grief seems to be in this sentence: “The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.”

Grief allows you to see all of the facts, but it will still convince you of the fiction. It deprives you of rational thought, like a mental illness.

“Time is the school in which we learn.”

Whenever I become too sure of myself, I think of those words.

It’s important to do enough thinking, talking, and research so that you can be convicted in your beliefs, but every great person I’ve met has several core changes in the way they think as time passes.

You lose loved ones, your country changes, and you go through so much that you can’t help but coming out of all of that a different person.

It is a reminder that ideas you dismiss as ridiculous may one day become your entire philosophy.

I love books like this because I have never met anyone in my personal life who is so open and honest about their experiences with love and death. Those are two things I am curious about, so I seek any honest accounts on them that I can find.

Whether you’re curious about death, physics, love, or war, there’s a book for you somewhere that will give you what you need.

I'm trying to change the course of someone else's life by gifting these books every week- even if I never know it.

I love Joan Didion’s writing, and if you liked this piece you’ll love this one that I did last year. It’s a meditation on the first quote (“Life changes fast”), and how that relates to a famous quote from Steve Jobs on following your passion and mortality.

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Also, I’m always on the hunt for new stories, so if you ever come across an article, book, movie, documentary, folktale, YouTube video, Instagram post, etc. that I would find interesting, send it my way! That’s an easy way to make my day.