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In effect, we adjust to the overwhelming variousness of our social world by closing off the possibility of surprise—by eliminating the fortuitous, which also means eliminating the serendipitous. The two terms need discrimination. "Fortuitous" derives, obviously, from fortune, in Latin fortuna, that is, chance. So aware were the ancients of the power of fortuna in human life that they elevated it to divine status: the Goddess Fortuna is the subject of innumerable discourses, pious and otherwise, and portraits of lucky or unlucky (fortunate or unfortunate) men strapped to her Wheel litter the surviving pages of old books. Dante even conceives of her as having been given—by God himself—the task of ruling the course of human affairs. I used to know a man, fierce of aspect but kind of heart, who at church helped take care of children, and would invariably distribute cookies or cupcakes without regard to personal preference: when one of the kids would complain that she preferred chocolate chip to peanut butter, or white icing to pink, he would snap, "Ya get whatcha get," and move on to the next kid. There spoke truly the voice of Fortuna. Indeed, that's the only thing that Fortuna ever tells us: Ya get whatcha get.
Serendipity is different. The word was coined by that curious man Sir Horace Walpole, known today (if at all) as one of the founders of the "Gothic" tale of suspense and terror, but more famous in his own time as an especially elegant and proficient writer of letters. In a 1754 letter to a friend he describes his discovery of some curious Venetian coat of arms, and pauses to say that "This discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity." And then he explains that "very expressive word" of his own invention: "I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip'"—Serendip being an old name for Sri Lanka: "as their Highnesses travelled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of … (for you must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for comes under this description)." The finding of what one is not looking for will be the element of the letter most obviously relevant to what I've been saying so far; but equally important is the phrase "by accidents and sagacity," or, as Walpole puts it later in the same letter, "accidental sagacity."
Fortuity happens, but serendipity can be cultivated. You can grow in serendipity. You can even become a disciple of serendipity. The elevation of Fortuna to the status of goddess is a way of shrugging: an admission of helplessness, an acknowledgment of all that lies beyond our powers of control. But in the very idea of serendipity is a kind of hope, even an expectation, that we can turn the accidents of fortune to good account, and make of them some knowledge that would have been inaccessible to us if we had done no more than discover what we were looking for.
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