By nature, I’m not serendipitous. Every day, I do a list of things I need to accomplish (if I could only get them done every day … but that’s another discussion).

Same with travel. We do the equivalent of a PDF for every day’s travel and we pretty much stick to that. My theory is that if I’m going to be in Rome for two weeks, I want to plan out where I’m going, what I’m seeing, and what I want to do. We’re not the types to linger in our hotel rooms. We get up, grab something to eat, and we’re gone. That day was planned out weeks before.

But we are open to those moments when someone comes along that you want to get to know. Or you see a spot you’d like to explore. A view that’s worth staying with for a while

And that’s important. Because when you’re traveling, you’re almost by definition exploring a place you don’t know well. And while guide books and websites and planning are all good, having the ability to see where to divert from them are also good. See a place that suddenly interests you? It may be worth diverting for.

Likewise, if you meet someone you’d like to know better and the feeling is mutual, consider spending time on that personal connection. Because a city or a country isn’t just a collection of buildings and views; it’s a mass of people. And while language differences can present difficulties, if you have even a little bit of skill in their language, it’s amazing the connections that can be made.

One of my cherished memories was from a trip my wife and I made to Lebanon in 2013. We had gone to the northern area of the country to see the famed cedars of Lebanon and I smiled at a young man who was there with his wife and daughter. He greeted me in Arabic, and I had to shrug in response because I could understand next to nothing in that language. He in turn thought for a moment and greeted me in broken English. We talked back and forth for a few minutes, and he asked me if we could be their guests for dinner.

I wish we could have, but we were already to be guests with someone else that evening. But our limited interaction was still a great part of that trip.

Life in general is usually a balance of things planned and things serendipitous. A good way of looking at it is to plan but always be open to new things that may come along. It works – whether you’re at home, away, or somewhere in between.