We all know what surprise is. It is the felling of wonderment as something extraordinary unfolds.

An intra-systematic event is something we are not accustomed to thinking about. It's a high-flutin', eight syllable, academic term. It's a fancy way of saying that an event is shared outside a system. The case I want to talk about, the system is a conversation. So to put a finer point on this, this is what happens when a surprise occurs, not about the topics of a conversation or even who is in conversation, but you are unexpectedly struck by a tickle originating somewhere in the universe that sparks a surprising novel idea, original notion, or a magical felling.

This sounds fun and something to strive for but it's a rare occurrence. Or is it?

When two people are in conversation, they each have different goals which is why mutual understanding on the topics talked about is so hard to achieve. What can happen if you leave yourself open to it, is the discovery of a related but not discussed idea or an unrelated surprise event.

If these happen by accident, how do we become more accident prone?

As an example: I'm in a conversation with a group about adding wiki-links to notes to provide a "jump-to" point. Totally unrelated the intra-systematic event occurs when Phil mentions that the title of 202006291709 is individual illusion of self (vs. no self) parallels collective illusion of human (vs. nature). Suddenly a flood of sensation I'd call a sense of serendipity cascades around me. I see myself in the ENGL 316 Environmental Writing Class presenting a paper on a non-dualistic view of the environmental crisis. A fantastic rush. I'm calling this a "intra-systematic event."