Accepting Invitations, Being Certain and Serendipity.

Last weekend I was in London and I was invited to a social event at which I met someone who I had never met before and they invited me to their house for a roast dinner. If this happened whilst I was traveling by bike  I would  accept the offer and attend without a second thought. However, being back in England, I found myself briefly dealing with a few pre-conceptions; perhaps English-qualities? I wondered whether they really meant it. I had never met this person before. Maybe they were drunk?

But my travelling mind was shouting 'what the heck are you on about? Of course I would like to eat a roast dinner'. I know from my travel experiences that this demonstration of hospitality is not a strange thing. It doesn't matter whether I am in England, Iran or Mongolia.

On Sunday morning I waited for a text or phone call to confirm the invitation and motivate me to leave the house. I sat in the living room and my girlfriend's housemate walked in. I said "I've been invited to a roast by someone I had never met before, should I go". He said immediately, "woah! A roast, of course you should go".

The bottom line is that there is nothing to be lost from accepting these sort of invitations and meetings. They are the way that serendipitous occurrences happen. I went to the roast; it was delicious, and made some new friends. At the end of the meal, my host, said that the roast dinner almost didn't happen as he was a bit drunk the night before, but the point is that it did, and he was a very good host. He created a situation that brought a group of people together who previously didn't know each other.

These days I try to make a point to speak to random people if I can. When I am cycling I ask people for directions and even such a small interaction can provide a satisfying experience. The experience of travelling by bicycle and the way I act whilst travelling by bicycle can be applied to everyday life. It's kind of a nomadic existence but within a specific location. A city like London feels like more of a miniature country than a city anyway, especially when you move around by bike, and make a point of exploring.

When Tom and I were  cycling in Mongolia we took a GPS. It was terrible for showing the location of tracks accurately because when one track became too rutted then people drove over directly over the open steppe and a new track was formed. The GPS was useful for the location of settlements which were accurate and so we still made use of it. Nevertheless, there was a realisation that perhaps without the GPS we would have relied more heavily on the local population and our map and compass for direction.  Perhaps the GPS had detracted from our experience in regard to meeting locals.

Often there seems to be a lot of emphasis put on being 'certain'. We are used to having access to so much information that can make us feel surer about our decisions. However, we can't know fully the accuracy of the information if it is from secondary sources. There has to be space for using our intuitive skills and allowing serendipity into the equation. Perhaps the problem with the web, incredibly popular iPhones and other such gadgets is that they are too focused on giving us access to the information and cut out the process of getting to the information. Do they take away our ability to search out the information we need through other means other than using Google Maps or looking on Wikipedia? Does it make us shun doing things that we are not 100% sure about? Does it make us worse at working out the information we really need?

On Saturday I met up with a uni friend I hadn't seen for 5 years. I always found him to be an incredibly inspirational person. He was filling in what had been happening with since I last saw him. A few years ago he had been applying for jobs after completing his masters. He attended a job interview and was successful in getting the job, however, it turned out that his success was partly a product of a shared interest with his interviewee and future employer in the sci-fi television show Star Trek, in addition to his skill-set. Later in the day he said a couple of things that made me think: 'people don't leave enough room for serendipity' and 'people aren't intuitive enough'.

In conclusion, I say accept invitations especially from people you don't know. Surely it's only going to expand your friendship group and spread good vibes. Being a good guest is a skill as is being a good host. Interact with other people to find out the information you need to get to your destination. Respect the process. There is something magical about people interactions which can't be replaced by technology.