It was an ordinary day, the kind that passes without leaving much behind. I was munching on fortune cookies when I noticed there was only one left in the box.
I reached for it, but it slipped from my fingers. The cookie hit the table with a small crack, its little strip of fortune peeking out.
Oh, how unfortunate.
I pulled out the little paper from the cookie and read the fortune out loud.
“Luck is coming your way.”
I stared at the words for a moment before laughing to myself. What an oddly optimistic promise from a tiny strip of paper.
Maybe that was the appeal of fortune cookies. For a brief moment, I could unfold a tiny piece of paper and pretend I was unwrapping a glimpse of my destiny.
But what if the promise of good fortune meets a life that has never been particularly fortunate?
For some, fortune looks like a full plate. To others, it may simply be having enough time to finish one. One may find an opportunity waiting behind an open door, while another may have to knock a few times before it opens. I looked down at the fortune slip in my hand and wondered how differently someone else might read those same words.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if fortune was ever truly as random as we make it seem. After all, not everyone begins life with the same things within their reach. What we call luck may be nothing more than the sum of what was given before we could even have the chance to choose.
Perhaps fortune isn’t blind. Maybe people are simply born on different sides of it — some leave the table full, while others begin with only crumbs of opportunity.
I looked down at the little slip of paper still resting between my fingers. Luck is coming your way. For once, I did not laugh at the promise. Instead, I wondered how fortunate I was to even believe in the possibility of it — to reach for something, to hope for something, to imagine that something good might still be waiting ahead.
I glanced at the broken cookie on the table, surrounded by other crumpled fortune slips, and smiled.
How fortunate.
- Georzea Akeisha R. Santos
(Illustration by Reese Allison Bayona/FEU Advocate)