Offering 2024–047
a fortune -
look out!
this day will bring you
something you don’t expect…
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Editor’s Note: For folks that don’t eat Chinese food in America, a quick search for ‘fortune cookies’ on the internet might be needed to understand the post. My own research informs me that fortune cookies are an American invention with Japanese origin and not as prevalent elsewhere in the world.
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It’s Friday night. You don’t feel like cooking. You roll up to the local Chinese take out and grab some Beef Lo Mein and a couple of egg rolls. As they sack up your order, they throw in a couple of fortune cookies on top of your food. A bit hungry, you grab one, crack it open, and pull the white slip of paper out that has the words written above before snacking on the crunchy goodness. Then you take a moment to contemplate…
While the fortunate written above came from my head rather than a crispy cookie, it certainly came to fruition this week. Every single day this week, I experienced something, if not many things, that absolutely was not on my radar.
Sometimes, the unexpected is little. While traveling through an intersection I’ve driven through almost every weekday for five years, I noticed a parking lot in the woods I’d never seen before. I delighted in that moment.
Sometimes, the unexpected is huge. On Tuesday, my wife’s company unexpectedly laid off seven percent of its workforce. No, she wasn’t let go, but that doesn’t make it any less scary.
Dwight D. Eisenhower once said,”…I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” While he was talking about battle, he could just as well be talking about life. You work the plan that is your life and all of the sudden an immovable object appears and you are plumb out of irresistible force to continue forward. That’s where planning comes in. How do I plan for life?
Meditation.
By regularly practicing ordering my thoughts and holding them in check, I prepare for all that life throws at me. It doesn’t always work, but it at least puts me in a place where I can better handle the unexpected when it arises if not find some joy. Perhaps one day I’ll arrive at a place where I accept all unexpected events as joy for the shear fact that I’m still alive and experiencing change.
