How I'm a lot like Alexander Fleming, only Noble Prize-less

My grandfather knew Alexander Fleming, and so I grew up hearing the story of his great discovery. He was a research scientist. He spent years studying anti-bacterial agents. But he was an untidy man. One day he left his lab window open and some petrie dishes on a table. Some mold blew in, contaminated one of the samples, and upon investigating, Fleming realized it was destroying bacteria. And so he discovered penicillin, one of the greatest medical discoveries of all time.

I used to wonder why we gave Alexander Fleming credit for the discovery. After all, it was an accident. Why was he so lauded for being messy? He wasn't even working on an antibiotic when it happened. So what's the big deal?

Now I realize he was a creative--like writers, like painters, like musicians. Like scientists. We do the work. Every day, we do the work. We go into the lab and put in the hours, just in case. And often it's not our training or talent or intellect or cleverness that makes something work--it's happenstance. It's serendipity. Sometimes I write a sentence that seems meaningless and I'll delete it later. But then I notice it on another pass, consider it, and realize that little bit is a tiny spotlight on a layer of depth and meaning I hadn't even realized was there. I can't take credit for it. But I can take credit for being at work, writing my butt off, when it happened. I can take credit for noticing it, like in the petrie dish. And for working with it, expanding on it, applying it to the story.

Fleming didn't stop with some mold in a dish. He studied that, applied that, and made a vaccine that could rid the human body of infection. I hope when some mold comes floating in the window, it finds me hard at work. And maybe I can work with that mold till it becomes a story worth reading.