Announcing (and Presenting and Defending) the Three Alternatives
By Richard Eyre

Publisher's note: For the past 12 weeks, Richard Eyre has outlined and defined “The Three Deceivers” of Control, Ownership, and Independence, and detailed how our obsessions with them can ruin the quality of our lives. This week begins the second phase of the column, with the new name “The Three Alternatives.” In this and future weeks (always on Fridays and staying posted on the front page through the weekend), Richard will elaborate on what he believes is a better and more spiritual alternative for each of the three deceivers and in doing so will open to you a new world of thinking that may change how you live. He continues to welcome your feedback and inputs. Write to him at Richard@meridianmagazine.com . If you missed any of the four earlier columns in this series, you can go to the Deceivers Archive (see right sidebar) and catch up.

In last week’s column, we set forth a framework for what the Three Alternatives should be and for what they should do. If you were not able to read it, you may want to click here and review it as background for today’s column.

Thanks!

First of all, thanks to you marvelous Meridian readers who, for a dozen weeks and a dozen columns, have followed my ideas about why and how our obsessions with Control, Ownership and Independence are undermining our happiness and the quality of our lives.

Not only have you read and “listened,” but hundreds of you have sent in your thoughts and your ideas on what the three alternatives should be. We have discovered together that the three deceivers of CO&I are “paradigms” — or ways to view the world — and that they are filled with half-truths and misleading assumptions that can cause us to spend vast amounts of time and energy in pursuit of things that we can never really have and wouldn’t really want even if we could have them.

We have concluded that there are only two ways to rid ourselves of false or “half-truth” paradigms. One is to expose them, to dig down and discover where and why they are false and to consciously reject them and turn away from them. The other is to replace them with true and eternal paradigms — to push them aside by moving in new ways of looking at the world which fit better with the Gospel and which work with true principles and replace the selfish, materialistic, short term motivations of CO&I with the selfless, family-oriented, eternal motivations of their three alternatives.

The Criteria

Since you have waited 12 weeks for The Three Alternatives, we had better be thorough and convincing in their introduction and unveiling. So I will try to define them clearly, and make my case that they are superior to the three deceivers on the three most important criteria:

The “unveiling” then, of each of the three alternatives, will first announce the word, then define it with an “enhanced definition” that helps explain why it is the alternative, and then contrast it with the deceiver that it replaces, justifying why it is more correct, more motivating, and why it produces better results.

Three Eleven-letter “S” words

It just so happens (well, actually I worked pretty hard to make it happen) that each of the Three Alternatives is an 11-letter word that starts with S. The words, of course, are just the titles, the symbols, the names of the Three Alternatives, and will not represent the full meaning of the new paradigms until they are completely defined and explained. But that is what this column is about now and for the next several weeks — to define and explain each of the three Alternatives, and to discuss how they can be implemented into our lives and make it easier and more natural to live by true principles and to prioritize our eternal goals.

One of the three 11-letter S words (the alternative to Ownership) is a solid and familiar word in the Gospel, and is the one that many readers guessed correctly as one of the Three Alternatives. Another of them (the alternative to Independence) is a new word — a combination of two other words, actually — and thus a word you have never heard before. The third one, and the one I will introduce first, since it is the alternative to Control (the C in CO&I) is a somewhat trendy word that you may not particularly like until you hear it fully and correctly defined.

Today’s column will lay out this alternative to Control. Next week’s column will introduce the 11-letter S word that is the alternative to Ownership, and the column in two weeks will present the final 11-letter S word that is the alternative to Independence. By doing them one at a time, I hope to be able to explain them fully and completely enough to convince you to adopt them as the lenses through which you view yourself and your world.

The Alternative to Control is Serendipity

This marvelous word has been over-simplified and even bastardized quite a bit lately in popular culture, becoming the name of ice cream stores, boutiques, and clothing lines and even the title of a major movie. Serendipity is often defined as “dumb luck” or having something good happen to you by chance.

Its true definition, though, is much more interesting, quite extraordinary and quite spiritual.

The word was coined by a 19th century English author named Horace Walpole who loved an ancient Persian fable called “The Three Princes of Serendip” (Serendip being the early name of the beautiful, teardrop shaped island off the southern tip of India that the British called Ceylon and that we, today, call Sri Lanka.)

In the fable, the three princes each go out in search of their fortune. None of them find a fortune, but all of them, through their acute awareness and perception, find things that are better than a fortune — love, truth, and opportunities to serve. They are able to make these discoveries because they notice things that other people miss, and thus find unexpected joys and opportunities.

Walpole, reading the fable, said to himself, “We do not have an English word that expresses that happy ability to find things that are better than what we think we are looking for.” So he made up the word Serendipity, and defined it as follows:

Definition

Think for a moment about the elements of Walpole’s definition. First, it is a person’s state of mind or an attitude. Second, it requires awareness and sensitivity along with sagacity, (a thoughtful and wise interpretation of what one notices). Third, it implies that the person is proactive, because he is seeking things, or has goals. Fourth, it indicates that, as life spontaneously happens, we get opportunities, or impressions, or ideas — perhaps things that most people miss — which are actually better than whatever it was that we were seeking or doing at the moment.

In other words, as we are going along, trying to control things and get the things done on our list, working to reach our goals of what we want to do and what we want to have, we should strive to stay aware and in tune, using both our senses and our inspiration . As we do, we may well see better paths — things more important than what is on our list; things that God wants us to do that supersede what we thought we wanted to do.

These “serendipities” can be big or small. They can involve little opportunities or small beauties like an unexpected call from a friend or a lovely sunset. Or they can be big connections or discoveries (Fleming discovered antibiotics by the serendipitous observation of how the mold blown in through an open window started killing bacteria on a Petri dish in the lab.)

Large or small, the search for serendipity puts the premium not on controlling but on observing, not on forcing things to be the way we want them, but on seeing the possibilities in things as they really are.

Spiritual Serendipity

Serendipity really gets interesting when the spiritual dimension is brought in. We can strive to be more aware and observant not only via our five senses, but through the Spirit. As we strive to become more attuned to the Lord’s plan, and to His will, things come to us via His spirit — impressions, “nudges,” promptings, inspiration — and through them we become more in tough with what is really going on around us, and we begin to see things the way He wants us to see them.

In this spiritual dimension, serendipities become what Elder Bednar calls “tender mercies,” and we begin to perceive the unexpected (and certainly “beyond our control”) blessings that God puts before us every day.

An enhanced, spiritual definition of Serendipity then, would be:

Contrasting the Deceiver with its Alternative

Control or Serendipity: Which is true, which is most motivating, and which produces the best results?

Truth:

The fact is that we control so very little, and that God controls all. His gifts are all around us, along with His opportunities and incredible beauties, and we just need the awareness and spiritual sensitivity to see them. We can cultivate this awareness, and we can ask Him for it. As we do, we use our agency to take the spiritual initiative that allows God to bless us and inspire us and guide us. Guidance is infinitely more valuable and more worthy of our pursuit and quest than is control. And Serendipity is the mind set or paradigm that can get us to guidance.

Motivation:

Control can seem motivating because it appeals to our lust for power and dominion. But it is a dangerous kind of motivation because it is unbridled by humility and can lead to the worst kind of pride. With a serendipity paradigm we are motivated by our desire to discover and deliver God’s will into our lives. We begin to see life as a great adventure where our challenge is not to control but to perceive and to understand. We become as interested in learning to “watch and pray” as we are in learning to “work and plan” and the two sets of skills complement and enhance each other.

We become motivated not just to “kick against the pricks” in the blind pursuit of our own selfish goals, but to diligently seek the Lord’s will for us and to discover and develop our unique, individual foreordinations.

Results:

The results of a Control paradigm (“control freaks” are actually pretty well named) include obsessive behavior and a lot of irritation and frustration at all the things and circumstances (and people) in life that simply won’t happen or behave exactly the way we want them to. In a control mentality, we are annoyed by surprises or unexpected occurrences that distract us from the things on our list.

Things that don’t fall into line with our plans and our controlling idea of how things should happen are seen as interruptions, irritations, impediments.

And then there are the times that we do succeed in controlling a situation, only to find out that the results would have been better if we had let it go in another direction. The longer we live, the more we realize that we don’t have enough information to pre determine what is best for ourselves or for others, and that we are better off to seek the will (and submit to the will) of the One who knows all.

The results of a spiritually serendipitous paradigm are much happier, much more peaceful, and much more exciting. Through our increased awareness, we learn to live in the moment and enjoy the present. We do our best to plan our future, but we expect and relish (and look for) surprises and unexpected opportunities. We take off the “blinders” of our obsessions with our own wants, and start seeing to both sides and noticing the needs and the beauties of others.

A serendipitous attitude seems to slow time down, to take the pressure off, to make us observers of God’s world rather than feverish little worriers, trying to control our own little imagined world, and never finding enough time to do so.

A serendipitous approach to life makes us consistently aware of God’s control and thus causes us to constantly seek His guidance and even His perspective. In short, a serendipitous approach draws us closer to the Spirit, while a control approach pulls us away.

Perhaps most importantly, the serendipity paradigm creates an atmosphere and an awareness in which the key principles of Christ’s gospel can live and grow and find their fullest implementation. Faith flourishes because we can draw down His power rather than depending on our own. Hope is always present because we are seeking and trusting in His will and acknowledging His control and believing that all will turn out as He has ordained. And charity never faileth because He is able to work through us due to our awareness of others and of the daily opportunities put before us to give a little, to serve a little, to help a little.

Upcoming

There will be more — much more — on Serendipity in future columns. In fact an entire month (four columns) will be devoted to a fuller explanation and description of what a serendipity paradigm is, how it works, and how you can develop it in your life. But first, we must introduce the other two Alternatives. Next week we will present and define and defend the Alternative to Ownership.

Thanks for staying on board for this journey, and thanks for continuing to send me your feedback at Richard@meridianmagazine.com.

What do you think of the first of theThree Alternatives? Does a Serendipity paradigm preserve all of the good aspects of Control (initiative, discipline, responsibility and so on) but eliminate all of the negative aspects (judgment, jealousy, conceit, presumption, envy, covetousness, frustration and other deceiving and damaging qualities)? Does a serendipitous perspective help us to see “things as they really are”? The next two columns will unveil the other two Alternatives (to Ownership and to Independence) and future columns will explore each of the Three Alternatives individually and in much greater depth. All through the process, Richard will continue to appreciate your input at Richard@meridianmagazine.com.