Our accomplishments are insignificant in comparison to how much there is to be accomplished.
With that being said, it is easy to understand why we would turn to the unseen world of myth and magic as a means to explain our existence. We surrender to absent-minded ideas and practices, stirring the waters within, adding the seasoning of folklore, fiction and faith to create a boiling soup of frantic, fanaticism. We flock to religions and rescissions of reason, blaming science for our lack of purpose, crucifying logic and freeing the criminal that is unbound desperation.
Our fear becomes our fuel. Our demise becomes our mission. And we are none the richer for our faithful decisions.
I have always found fortune cookies to be amusing. While most are able to grasp that the tiny ribbon encased within the sugary origami pocket is meant to be nothing more than a gimmick of sentiment, a literary treat combing the ideals of luck, fate and grammatical errors [yes, grammatical errors are an ideal], those same individuals, deep down inside, design tiny hope-filled bubbles that float and fly up from their heart, into their lungs and out their mouth and nose once the fortune has been revealed.
If what we read is applicable to our dreams or desires, we smile, smirk and thank an unseen force for the wisdom imparted to us this day by way of crispy, buttery goodness. When the prophecy is that of idiocy or irrelevance, we curse our cookie treat, sigh and blame the Chinese for everything cheap. [though I think a Japanese man invented the fortune cookie]
Even after stuffing our guts with oily noodles and various meat products, we are not truly fulfilled and we wait in nervous anticipation for those vanilla clams with the psychic strands to validate our lives.
O.K., maybe its just me.
This 'eternal searching' is not limited to post-dinner desserts. We are constantly seeking validation, a gentle confirmation that we are going in the right direction, making the right choices, and living the way we should. We look for it from our parents, our peers, our pastors, our professors, our sciences, our religions, our loves and...even our enemies. In a life with no guarantees, there is comfort in fantasies...even poorly spelled or stale...we crave the sugar-coated truth. We need to know we are not alone, even though, that is exactly what we are. No affiliation or declaration can change the fact that there may not be a reason or rhyme for 'what?' or 'why?'.
As someone who can fully admit he has looked to the stars for substance, religion for essence and every other nook and cranny, from science to sensationalism, for a bit of revelation, I tend to look forward to my plastic-wrapped soothsayer after each meal. In fact, just yesterday, after consuming a tasty dinner of Mongolian Barbeque, I gave in to my typical tendencies once the check/cookie tray came my way.
My mind began to psyche itself out...
"This is it. This is where everything changes. I'm going to read my fortune and it is going to tell me exactly what I need to know. This is where it all ends and begins again. This is my destiny, my fate, my purpose. Once I read this, my entire life will make sense. I'll follow it's advice and nothing will go wrong, everything will be right. This is what I have been waiting for, what I was born for. This is the day of reckoning!!!"
*opens plastic wrapping*
*eats half of cookie [as is tradition]*
*holds miraculous answers to the universe up to face and reads*
"A carrot a day may keep cancer away"
There is silence.
There is stillness.
There is me with a mouthful of cookie, motionless, and barely breathing...
I then proceeded to laugh for five minutes straight; loud, uncontrollable laughing, snorting and giggling. My girlfriend reaches for the fortune and begins laughing as well. We are egging each other on, unable to cease the deep, riotous cheer that is vomiting up from our bellies.
There are tears.
There is snot.
There is drool.
There is everything wonderful about genuine laughter.
We walked away from the restaurant, talking about the 'significance' of the fortune. My girlfriend points out that it reads 'may' keep cancer away. I begin to laugh and the whole things fires up again.
Thus is life.
Our deep longing for significance , our yearnings for value are often answered with simple resolutions. We construct and assign meaning to every aspect of our lives. The mystical and the methodical are simply paths ultimately leading to the same place; uncertainty. All of our studies and all of our prayers fail to fill the void within us.
We just don't know, and perhaps we never will.
But instead of cheap thrills and broken wills, perhaps we should learn to validate ourselves by looking in a mirror. The image we see is all we need to take the next step. Staring at the reflection in front of us, we simply need to say "I'm alive today, and today is all I've got. This moment is my future. I am alive, right now."
If you're like me, you'll learn to look into that mirror and laugh out loud - at every past attempt to contrast and compare your life to unreasonable standards, at every worry or concern that you were wasting your time, at every fear that you would die unsatisfied - at every fortune cookie gone awry - and suddenly, the person on the other side, the person deep inside, will be the only validation you ever need.
The towers of temptation to turn to outside sources will begin to crumble and fade away, once we establish a solid foundation in ourselves.
It's not so much a question of "Why?' we are but of "Who?" we are.
That is perhaps the one thing we can know for certain, if we so desire.
Let's just remember to eat our carrots, shall we?
2 comments:
Remember that fortune cookie I got at SWC that said I would suffer a painful death? Well, it wasn't true.
I am constantly seeking validation in my relationships, to the point that it freaks me out when I don;t receive it. I'm an addict.
Thanks, for this.
that hit me.
thank you, sean.
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