I experienced another batch of serendipitous events this past week. But it wasn’t Leo DiCaprio this time around; it was Shia LaBeouf.
Here’s what happened:
I made a last-minute surprise road trip to Victoria, British Columbia…a three-hour drive from where I live in Qualicum Beach. I didn’t tell any of my Victoria friends I would be in town because…well, because I wanted to stay in a hotel and do the tourist thing on my own for once.
But I got busted.
I was walking along Dallas Road when a couple of cyclists suddenly stopped beside me and gave me the look (rather like Paddington Bear’s “Hard Hard Stare”).
They were, of course, dear friends of mine who were, shall we say, rather surprised to see me traipsing about their town.
“Why didn’t you call?” asked the guy.
“You could have stayed with us!” said his wife.
“I know, I know…I just wanted to…you know, hang out and do my own thing.”
We all had a good laugh then a nice chat, right there on the bike path. They told me they’d watched “The Peanut Butter Falcon” the night before.
“The what?” I asked.
“The movie, “The Peanut Butter Falcon!” It is awesome…you have to see it.”
A few days later, I did. And when I did, I damn near fell off the couch the first time Shia LaBeouf appeared on screen. I had never seen him in a film before. Shia is (in that movie, anyway) a dead ringer for my dead husband.
And I don’t mean Shia just looks like my husband, John, who died in 2000. The way Shia looked at the camera and his co-star, Zach Gottsagen, reminded me of the way John used to look at me.
It was rather uncanny.
I still can’t quite put my finger on it but there was something about Shia’s eyes that reminded me of John’s. And the fact that much of Shia’s face was hidden under a mountain of facial hair probably helped me focus on his eyes.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the film (for many reasons) and made a mental note to myself that, when the time comes, Shia would be a perfect actor to play John in one of the film and/or theatre projects I have on the go.
But the serendipitous sequence of Shia events wasn’t quite finished. And my subconscious mind had been doing a little processing of its own. Again.
Two days after watching the film, I woke up in the morning thinking about the flashback scene in “The Peanut Butter Falcon” when Tyler, the character played by Shia, was driving his brother home and fell asleep at the wheel.
The flashback was super short. We just saw Tyler driving, then his point of view of seeing the yellow lines on the road, then slowly crossing over the yellow lines and then…nothing. Fade to black. We didn’t see the crash nor the aftermath because we didn’t need to. By that point in the film, we already knew his brother had died, we just didn’t know how. After that, we did.
So I asked myself: where in the screenplay, that I am currently rewriting (about John’s death), could I trim some scenes that are not necessary to the story? The answer came to me instantly. Thank you, subconscious mind.
I got out of bed and proceeded to cut FOUR pages from my script!
All this because of an impromptu road trip to Victoria. But that’s serendipity for you.
When we are open to paying attention to the little nudges the Universe sends our way, we begin to realize two things: 1) just how very connected we all are; and 2) those little nudges just might be coming our way for a reason. It’s up to us to decide how best to proceed.
What some people call serendipity sometimes is just having your eyes open.
—Jose Manuel Barroso
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