You go to a Chinese restaurant and you always get a fortune cookie with the bill.

It’s a stiff little folded pastry that you break at the middle. Inside is a little strip of paper. One side usually has Chinese characters. The other side has your fortune.

Sometimes the “fortune” isn’t really a fortune. Sometimes it’s “Your lucky numbers are —-“ with a string of lucky numbers. To make it a “fortune,” some people take those numbers and enter them in the lottery. If, after billions of possibilities, someone wins with those numbers, that’s good fortune, and they become true believers. Movies are made about it.

Sometimes the “fortune” is just a true statement. “Some things are bigger than others.” “Dogs are not cats.”

Obvious statements can become cliches, but that doesn’t make them “fortunes.”

“The sun rises before it sets.” This certainly is philosophical speculation, and maybe it’s part of the devious plan to get people to think more. But I don’t think so.

The element of prediction needs to be somehow included. Your “fortune” is what awaits you in your future.

“The sun that sets at night will rise in the morning.”

That’s more like it.

I was surprised, amused, almost fascinated by what I saw one time at Egg Roll Express in Pasadena. That’s our beloved local wok fry Chinese restaurant. You can watch the cooks behind the counter filling the woks and stirring and tossing the food over the open flame as you watch your dinner, “that’s ours,” go through the stages of preparation. “Dinner and a show!” I would say, and they would always laugh in agreement.

At the end of the counter, just past the steps leading down to the dining area, there was a table. Women were sitting, working with busy fingers, taking thin rolled-out dough cut into squares, adding a little strip of paper from a stack in the corner, and folding with a twist. They were hand making the fortune cookies.

They filled a tray which was taken back behind a curtain to an oven, and they kept working tirelessly on the new batch.

“So that’s where they come from!” I thought. “Apparently it’s cheaper to make them here in-house than to buy in bulk from some company machine-made which includes tax, transportation and delivery.”

Then I read the “fortune” when I broke open my cookie, and decided, “The fortunes used to be better when they used a different fortune vendor.” The cookie, though, was delicious!

The reason I mention it today is because when I broke open my fortune, the fourth of four provided with our take-out order, even though there are only three of us, but it was a big order, I was given the honor of the last fortune.

Yesterday, when the food arrived, we all opened our fortunes. They were the usual nothing much. I read mine and tossed it and don’t even remember it.

Today, we’re working on the left overs, another full meal. I opened my fortune, and almost cried. I put it in the back of my wallet to carry it with me wherever I go.

I’ll end this discussion by quoting it.


“The love of your life will carry you through any circumstance.”