Dance with Chance
Purple Sand (Accidental Art) at Pfeiffer Beach, California
‘Much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the “off time” that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.” ~ Jenny Odell, How to do Nothing
Last week, we explored the fundamental role of ongoing change in every life. This week, let’s direct our attention to the role of chance, those “accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters” that change our days for better or worse. These events can run the gamut from delightful (hearing from an old friend) to shocking (being without power and water for several days, as recently happened in Texas).
According to the dictionary, chance is “fortuitous or accidental, a possibility.” That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a sequence of events behind the chance event; it’s just that they weren’t necessarily visible to you. There’s an element of luck to chance – being in the right place at the right time, or vice versa. We can experience a tragedy by chance which changes the course of our life. These chance events are out of our control so all we can do is respond to them in the best way we can.
Think back over your life and all the chance events that led you to where you are. I went to live across the country with a friend after University but came home when my Mother became ill. The job I took upon returning was where I met my husband. I never expected, growing up in Canada, that I would live in the U.S. for twenty-five years, but chance took us there. My parents both died in their 50’s, chance events that shaped my life moving forward.
Some of the best and worst moments of our lives happen by chance.
Chance is not only evident in the significant moments in our life. It’s also present every day. You might learn something new, based on something you read in a book or a newspaper. Maybe you get an unexpected call from an old friend or have an interesting conversation with a stranger. Or, a skunk finds respite in your garage (this happened to me). You could be forced to take a detour on your way to work and discover a bakery you never knew about. Maybe, you’ll win the lottery today! Don’t get your hopes up.
Many chance events are satisfying just because they’re unexpected. One year I kept a chance diary, writing down all the chance events that happened each day. It was amazing to look back on. We tend to remember what we considered negative experiences more than the positive ones. Writing down everything is a way to also notice when things go our way.
One of the things I love about photography is that often my best photographs come by chance; when I’m not looking for something in particular but open to what I’ll find. My photograph then becomes a visual representation of a chance encounter. Sand serves as a metaphor for this idea. Whenever I’m at a beach, like Pfeiffer Beach in the image above, I’m mesmerized by the random designs in the sand, all created by chance. Ephemeral beauty.
Our lives are like that sand, composed in each moment by deliberate actions, but constantly changing and ultimately decided by chance.
Inviting Chance In
Chance is also something you can invite into your life. Why would you do that? Because if you operate only according to your own will or the story of how things should be, you eliminate possibilities. John Cage, the musician and artist, and one of my most inspiring mentors, invited chance into his life and his work through what he called “chance operations,” which could be as simple as rolling dice. His philosophy was to dance with chance, to give his will, his wants, his desired outcome, a break and let chance make a decision.
Cage is most known for his avant-garde musical composition 4’33” (link in Resources) – where the “composition” consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. The song is created brand new each time from the ambient sounds in the room and the listening ears of the audience, a chance event every time. This may seem silly, but he was making a serious point. For this is the very definition of creation – something new comes into existence by bringing disparate elements together in a new way.
Sometimes, the most inventive creations happen by accident, by chance.
Cage believed that by using chance operations, he could destroy his narrative, his particular point of view. It’s not that his point of view wasn’t worthy, just that it was limited and there were a multiplicity of points of view he may not have considered. It was a way of freeing himself from his ego and his particular likes and dislikes. We’ll be exploring this more later. Chance is a way of letting things be as they are without imposing your own judgments on them.
“Most people don’t know that I use Chance as a discipline – they think I use it as a way of giving up making choices. But my choices consist in choosing what questions to ask. Begin with an intention and open it up to the unpredictable.” ~ John Cage, Where the Heart Beats
This is life (and art) in a nutshell – a dance with chance. Life is always uncertain, sometimes out of our control, as the past year has shown, and that is scary. Chance is a part of life and often enhances it. We can embrace it, as John Cage did. Whenever we feel our ego or rigid story is in charge, it’s time to ask provocative questions, like “How else can I look at this?” or “What other choice could I make?”
Practice
For this week, notice how much chance plays a part in your everyday life, in big and subtle ways. If you operate only according to the story of how things should be, you’ll be disappointed when things don’t go your way. And you might miss out on seeing the possibilities in the moment. This is how you see clearly and deeply.
I recommend keeping a chance diary for at least this week. Take note of all of the events that occur in a day by chance - from running into a friend, to reading an article that brings some new insight, to getting all green lights on the way home from work. Notice accidental art creations on the ground or sidewalk or beach. Here are a few other ideas.
Make a list of the major chance events in your life and reflect on how they’ve shaped the person you are.
When you walk, be open to what you discover. Take a different route. Walk at a different time of day. Let your body lead rather than your mind. What do you see by chance?
Open a random book to a random page and see what it has to say to you.
Try a different news source. What do you learn that surprises you?
Create a chance event for someone else. Stop in or call or send a note to a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. Write out a poem or quote and leave it somewhere for someone else to find. Do a random act of kindness for a stranger.
Use chance to guide you in a decision – roll the dice, pull a tarot card, use the I Ching.
Do you notice any themes or patterns arising? What surprises you about the chance events that happen this week? How did you respond?
Resources
The Guest House, a poem by Rumi on being receptive each day
Read: Simone de Beauvoir on how Chance and Choice Converge to make us who we are via Brain Pickings
Learn more about John Cage - Where the Heart Beats (book), the composition 4’33
I don’t venture far from my home these days. Yet so far this week, I happened upon a murmuration of starlings while walking with a friend, my pregnant niece had to go into the hospital because of contractions at 28 weeks (she’s doing better), and I had an unexpected and difficult but healing conversation. There’s always something. How about you? Do you have at least one chance event so far this week you can share?
It’s an interesting topic, this chance. I had drinks with a woman named Linda in 1985 after I crashed a creative writing class she was attending, to hear the guest speaker. Linda is still the love of my life, who makes every day a better one, and my life would be very different if not for that chance encounter.
Earlier this week, Sharana’s note about the book Surprise led me to the public library (thanks, Shanara!), and when I put Surprise on hold, a recommended book popped up: a reissue of a 1995 diary by musician Brian Eno (A Year With Swollen Appendices, originally published in 1996).
Eno tells a story about being in hospital, where a friend put a record on the player at low volume and left. Unable to reach the volume, Eno ended up listening to the sound of rain heard through an open window, with the recorded music occasionally bubbling through. That combination of random background sounds led to is interest in ambient electronica.
http://www.rebeatmag.com/fullness-of-wind-40-years-of-brian-enos-discreet-music/
So, my search for one book led by chance to another book written by a person I admire, whose career developed because of a combination of chance elements.
But wait, there’s more. A couple of days ago I was photographing on a street corner downtown. As often happens, someone came over to chat. The person was a street photographer who wanted to know more about what I was doing and why. I explained that I was photographing my neighbourhood, and in doing so explained why I enjoyed what I was photographing at that moment (street frontages with strong, simple lines), and, as someone passed by, how I like to incorporate the chance element of people into the picture.
My chance conversation with a stranger helped me understand how important the chance passage of people through my pictures turns individual street frontages into something different, sort of like Eno’s harp music drifting through the sound of rain.
I wonder if I would have had my photo-epiphany if I hadn’t been thinking about the significance of chance……