The Fortune Cookie

On a recent visit to a Japanese restaurant that happens to hand out fortune cookies, I was waiting for my takeout with my daughter Leilani, almost two.  She was having a bad day, and so, hoping to reverse my fortune and improve her mood, I requested a batch of fortune cookies for her to munch on while waiting.  Unfortunately the cookies failed to work their magic.  She hurled the first cookie to the floor, along with the fortune inside. I picked up the fortune, unable to let pass a glimpse into my future.  It read, “People in your life will be more cooperative than usual.”

This came as a shock to me, given that Leilani at this moment was stretched out on the bench we were sitting on, face-down, back arched, having a meltdown that was seemingly uncooperative.  Perhaps the fortune was right, and this tantrum was just an illusion.  Everyone in the restaurant wasn’t really staring at my exasperated face.  The sushi chef wasn’t really making funny faces and doing the robot dance in an attempt to cheer Leilani up. 

I decided to open up the next fortune cookie.  A good old standby: “Your present plans are going to succeed.”  I love this fortune.  I must have gotten it a hundred times over the years.  I hope it’s right.  My present plans are to encourage the people in my life, namely a certain two-year-old, to be more cooperative than usual. 

I decided to open the last fortune cookie: “When one door closes, another will open.”  Sure enough, there was the restaurant owner with our bag of takeout food, holding the door open and bidding us farewell.  She couldn’t get us out of there quickly enough. 

As we headed off into the sunset, I decided to take the glass-half-full approach and look at life as one big fortune cookie.  Inside those golden walls of crunchy deliciousness, life is great now and getting better all the time.  Not a bad way to see the world.  The next time I need to reboot from the chaos in my life, I’ll be reaching for that wisdom to be found at the bottom of a takeout box.