In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. All praise is due to Allah in every situation, and peace and blessings be upon his messenger who came to teach us the way to happiness.
A book reviewed in the Guardian today claims that we can find meaning in the unexpected. The Serendipity Mindset, The Art and Science of Creating Good Luck by Dr Christian Buch argues that we can “see meaning in the unexpected, rather than see it as something anxiety-provoking,” says Busch. He goes on to add that rather than overplanning things, we should make the unexpected our ally. This reminds me of the fourth wisdom saying of Ibn Ata’illah Al-Iskandari in his collection of wisdom sayings:
أرح نفسك من التدبير، فما قام به غيرك عنك لا تقم به لنفسك
Give yourself a rest from planning, for what someone else is planning for you, do not do for yourself.
I agree with Dr Busch that it is very anxiety-provoking if one believes that one’s fate is dependent upon the success of one’s planning, because we humans cannot know everything and cannot control everything, no matter how hard we try. In any case, the unexpected has a positive role to play in human affairs. Busch claims that 50% of scientific discoveries came about as a result of coincidences.
Everybody can surely find any number of strange coincidences in their lives. One example from my own life was when my little girl wanted a helium balloon, but the shop didn’t have any. So I bought her an ordinary balloon. When she went into another shop, a little boy younger than her saw the balloon and wanted it. She kindly gave it to him, so I said to her the dua, عوضك الله خيرا منه May Allah compensate you with better than that. Later that day, I went out for a walk in the countryside, and saw in the distance a mile or so away a speck shining in the sunlight, floating down the valley. As it came closer, I saw it was a helium balloon. Slowly it came towards me, and then landed in the field right in front of me! So she got her balloon after all.
From his musings on coincidences and the unexpected, he has developed a method which he calls “joining the dots” or a “serendipity mindset.” This mindset finds for connections between apparently unconnected things. Such a person lives in the moment, actively looking to make meaning out of random encounters. In this way, Busch says, one is more flexible, and rather than complaining about unexpected events, one looks for the opportunities within them. In this way one can “start to create one’s own luck”.
As Muslims, we believe that Allah organises all things يُدَبِّرُ الْأَمْرَ as this is mentioned in verses including 10:3 and 10:31, 13:2 32:5. Tawheed, or unity is a concept that everything is connected. Therefore the Muslim very much lives in a world in which each encounter is deeply meaningful. There is no such things as coincidence or randomness in tawheed. In this way, the serendipity mindset very much resonates with the Muslim worldview. In each moment, we should be responding to what events, people and things God has sent our way by treating them as filled with meaning. If something goes wrong, the Muslim knows that there is no point wasting time on regrets, but must accept and deal with the reality he or she is confronting. In this way, the Muslim does not create meaning, but finds meaning. Life is filled with coincidence and meanings like this.
