Fortune Cookies

I hate fortune cookies.

I really hate them.

I have a problem. I always get bad sounding ones. I can remember a time when they weren’t so awful “Riches will come your way,” and the generic “Your future is bright” shenanigans. Now, as I have become an adult, they have gotten steadily less bright. One of the last ones I remember reading “You’re laughing now, but wait until later.” I don’t know about you dear reader, but I’d rather receive threats elsewhere. Imagine my dismay after a delicious Americanized-Chinese food meal, I unfurl that little piece of paper from shell of a cookie. My expectations for the taste of the cookie and the fortune are vaguely similar; one would assume that what awaits me will be generic and bland but hopeful.

Fortune cookies creep me out. They shouldn’t. They are just little strips of paper manufactured in some little factory. They are still creepy. They predict too much. Opening them begins with promise and it ends with a weird sense of gratification and dismay; you could have gotten a better one. Nothing should have that much power.

Somehow, I think of fortune cookies and I think of the phrase “best friend.” Like those cookies, I view something that should be positive as creepy and foreboding. When I look into my personal background, I dislike 90% of the people I have once claimed as my “best friend.” But Les, maybe you are just picking the wrong cookie-people. No, I blame the phrase. I can get away with friends, but as soon as you add that qualitative “best” onto, we have entered friendship purgatory and things will be heading straight to...

I don’t like to fall into that middle school cliche of “I hate labels.” I honestly love labels; they make things orderly and delightful. I think when we try to label things or people, we often overburden them with the expectation of being something great and are disappointed with they are not the “best.” We frame people with a destructive qualitative energy that reeks of “This is what you should mean to me.”

I know I am blessed. I am lucky to be surrounded by people that constantly exceed my expectations when I honestly should have none. I know this when the best compliment I receive from a friend all week is “She writes for fun” as if to say “She kills for sport!” I love this.

Maybe I should stop opening cookies for the words.

Maybe one day, I will just let the cookie be a cookie and appreciate it for what is.