I bet all of us have read at least one fortune cookie whose message made us stop and think. Granted, many of the "fortunes" are ridiculous and it is unlikely that some machine in China understands enough about our individual lives to create a fortune useful to us, as single human individuals, and certainly the cookie delivery process is not able to predict when YOU will be dining in the right place and at a time to receive just the cookie meant for you. And if it's random, then it's an utter joke as a "fortune," right?
Come to think of it, isn't a little insulting that ANYBODY would try to foist some fortune upon each of us, with such helter-skelter circumstances? What if I get a cookie saying I'll inherit money from an aunt, but I don't have an aunt? Not to mention that I reject the idea of anyone's successfully foretelling the future, as that ability would deprive me of my freedom of choice, right? (Granted, there is one very noble kind of fortunetelling, and that is the projection of observable trends; that is a(n almost) scientific process, and is a powerful planning tool, when properly utilized.) But we don't often see fortune cookie messages stating something like, "Given the U.S. unemployment rate holding at 9.1%, and a Consumer Worry Index rating of 13.3, we can speculate that a possible impact upon the closing of new car loans is . . ."
I digress. The point I wanted to make is this: The best "fortunes" in cookies are not fortunes at all. They should be called "wisdom cookies."
The piece of wisdom I received once, my best fortune cookie ever, sits taped on my desk at work. It says simply:
"There are no ordinary moments."
No comments:
Post a Comment