the search for one’s personal meaning is a long, circuitous journey, a deep exploration of what is, actually, not “practical” at all and for which there is no defined “next step.”

The English language is blessed with a wonderful word that captures the power of accidental connection: “serendipity.” First coined in a letter written by the English novelist Horace Walpole in 1754, the word derives from a Persian fairy tale titled “The Three Princes of Serendip,” the protagonists of which were “always making discoveries, by accid