After I gave into temptation and ordered sweet&sour chicken with white rice, straying from my a-typical sesame chicken with vegetable fried rice...I pride myself in changing scenery once in awhile....I opened my fortune cookie.
It said, "The best thing you can do is get good at being you".
The last time I got a fortune that seemed in tune with my life was the last time I needed chinese take out to relieve stress.
There has been a lot on my plate and I've been in denial about it because I don't want to lose control. When this happens, my eating patterns get fucked up. I'll buy a lean cuisine and order chinese food anyway....
But I'll always remember when I opened a fortune cookie and it said "Fate will find a way". It was over a year ago. Feels so much longer...this in my early twenty something desperate need to be wanted by the opposite sex - embarrasingly so when I look back on it. I strategically taped this fortune to my journal. I looked at it during times of procrastination, and wrote poetry about it or for it.
The next night I meet the opposite sex at a bar. He swears he knows me from somewhere. He tries to recall the time and place, the corridor, the room where we shook hands. It never happened...but his face is so familiar. I leave him behind for a moment or two - amazed by his assertiveness. My instincts fail me. I return to him. We talk. We leave together. I'm determined to figure out how I know him. I won't leave until I know. I found out later, I did meet him...for a brief moment in an office space, a brief smile on the sidewalk and I sat across the room from him once - on a couch. I don't think we talked. He was nobody really...and I fell for him, all because I believed in the fortune that said, "Fate will find a way"....not in the way I thought.
With "The best you can do is get good at being you", I smirked the same way I smirked then....but this time I'm listening more carefully, feet firmly planted on this ground.
"The best I can do..." is exactly what I needed to hear. I beat myself up (especially in the last few months)...and leave it to the cookie to remind me to keep on doing what I do best and keep on improving that best. This is my little ode to the fortune cookie. Whenever you feel guilty about getting chinese take out - look to the cookie. These fortunes always fit in the places that I am in my life, and keeps me on track.
Okay, laugh at me. Goooo ahead! I'm a dork.
4 comments:
i think this was a great post; not a laughable one!!! sometimes fortune cookies can say just the right thing. :) and, they are wonderous excuses to get chinese food.
they don't have fortune cookies with their chinese food here. it blows.
Love this post, J. I know what you mean. One time I was telling a funny story over Chinese food, and someone who was there said 'you are the funniest damn storyteller, I always want to hear your tales' and I opened my fortune and it said 'you have a flair for adding a fanciful dimension to any story'...I know this because it's still in my wallet, and I just pulled it out to quote it word for word. I look to the cookie!
p.s. to Macoosh - the funniest place in Galway was called 'Shamrock Chinese' which made me do a double-take. Delicious, though!
no fortune cookie??
you must find new chinese place, Macoosh, my love ;)
Thanks girls! That should be my question to conclude..."What has your fortune cookie told you?".
I had chinese food in Rome, it was so...so....odd. But not terrible, just very different. I CANT REMEMBER IF THERE WAS A COOKIE. I don't think there was though, and if so, it would have probably been in italian anyway. lol
Post a Comment