There are moments in life when the quiet accumulation of circumstances carry more weight than the happenstance itself.

There is something undeniably beautiful about serendipity: the way people meet by chance, click almost effortlessly, and replace the careful label of acquaintance with the warmer, more durable notion of friendship. These moments rarely announce themselves as important when they happen. Often, they begin with something ordinary. Dinner, a shared space, a passing conversation and only later reveal how quietly consequential they were. And they might not know, or ever knew.

I think of five people, each carrying backgrounds galore, who met once and stayed. One of them had the personality of a chemical catalyst, a present glue without force, essential without drawing attention, sticky. What followed was not deliberate. Dinner turned into a message group. The message group became regular outings. Regular outings eventually culminated in a New Year’s countdown somewhere up in the highlands, where time felt briefly suspended and belonging felt effortless. None of this was planned; it simply unfolded, as if it had always intended to. Unfolded, in the grand total sum of 2 passing moons’ time.

And just like that, a circle formed.

What is often left unspoken in stories of friendship, however, is the existence of the adjacent circles. The concentric social bubbles that hover just outside the core. The occupants not even excluded in any hostile sense. They are welcomed, spoken to, even liked. Yet a boundary remains, not because of intention or prejudice, but because of circumstance. The touring vehicle, quite literally, cannot accommodate everyone. Logistics, timing, and coincidence conspire to draw a line that feels invisible yet immovable.

This is where many find themselves: ever so slightly outside, ever so slightly adjacent.

It is a peculiar position, to be close enough to witness a group’s becoming, but not close enough to share its origin story. To understand the references, recognise the dynamics, and still sense that one arrived a moment too late. There is no resentment here, only a quiet awareness of how fragile inclusion can be. Belonging, it turns out, is not always about effort or intention. Sometimes it is simply about being present at the exact right moment, in the exact right configuration of people.

In that sense, serendipity is both generous and cruel. It gives freely, but selectively. It creates warmth without promising fairness. And for those who stand just outside its radius, it leaves behind a particular kind of longing. No, never, not to disrupt what exists, but to have been part of the accident that made it possible in the first place.

Perhaps this is the truth some still learning to accept: that some circles are not meant to expand, not because they are closed, but because they are complete. And sometimes, being adjacent is not a failure of belonging, but simply a different geometry of it. One that allows you to see clearly, even if you remain just beyond the edge.

Circles. At least they’re not sharp.