serendipity - sɛr(ə)nˈdɪpɪti / noun

# the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy

or beneficial way

 

synchronicity  - sɪŋkrəˈnɪsɪti / noun

# the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly

related but have no discernible causal connection

 

encounter - ɪnˈkaʊntə,ɛn / noun

# an unexpected or casual meeting with someone or something

# a hostile or adversarial confrontation

# the act of bringing two things into contact (especially for communication)

 

The human encounters narrated here reflect real situations the storytellers have experienced with strangers at home or while traveling, living or working away from home or abroad, mostly told as they happened and sometimes slightly fictionalized for all the obvious reasons. They are at times perceived as serendipitous and at times as manifestations of what Jung called synchronicity in the sense that none was planned in advance and with no obvious connection to either participant of these apparent random encounters. Although not always resulting in a desirable outcome that serendipity often implies, these are, nevertheless, encounters that generated meaning among unrelated strangers brought together at a 'random' moment on their journey's path.

 

What fascinates us in this instance is that these encounters often lead to nowhere, like a dangling bare wire on an electricity pylon, leaving one often wondering 'what was all this about?' and on occasion pondering on the 'what if?', contemplating on the many lose wires hanging without a match in our complex landscape of human encounters.

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With these stories, the writers might want to reflect on serendipity and synchronicity or just tell the story in hope that the story itself can offer a glimpse of the communicative sparks generated in these interactions and their apparent or hidden meaning. Perhaps the reader, distanced from the event, can discern better through the apparent randomness of these encounters a meaning that eluded the writer at the time, or gain a personal perspective or simply enjoy the story for the story's sake...

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 {...Serendipitous Encounters...}  is a collective storytelling space for real encounters with an element of serendipity, synchronicity or just 'out of the ordinary' encounters with humans, animals, nature or the 'supernatural'. Creative pieces, travelogues, poems, diary entries, ethnographic, autoethnographic narratives, visual stories with captions and more explorative pieces on serendipity/ synchronicity will be considered.