You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings... serendipitously.
Interpretation
True discoveries happen when one is open to unforeseen opportunities rather than strictly following a predetermined plan.
This quote by John Barth highlights the idea that significant achievements and delightful surprises often arise from exploration and openness rather than rigidly adhering to a predetermined path. When one sets out on a journey with good intentions but without strict expectations, they are more likely to encounter unexpected and fortuitous experiences, akin to the concept of serendipity.
In practice
When discussing the benefits of improvisation in creative projects.
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.
I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being meβs no joke.
It is necessary to constantly remind ourselves that we are not an abomination.
I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.
The cosmic humor is that if you desire to move mountains and you continue to purify yourself, ultimately you will arrive at the place where you are able to move mountains. But in order to arrive at this position of power you will have had to give up being he-who-wanted-to-move-mountains so that you can be he-who-put-the-mountain-there-in-the-first-place. The humor is that finally when you have the power to move the mountain, you are the person who placed it there--so there the mountain stays.
If you and sin are friends, you and God are not yet reconciled.
Today I know that such memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. I know that the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect preparation for the work He will give us to do.
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