On a windy, gentle night of the fall term, I opened three fortune cookies. My stomach rumbled and raged, prompting an impulsive Uber Eats order of pad thai and crab rangoons. I was standing up at my desk and taking the contents out of the paper bag, and there they were: three generous fortune cookies, individually wrapped in crinkly plastic. Three pronunciations of my future, three determinations of fate, or so I believed. They sat at the bottom of that paper bag, and later on my desk. The cookies whispered to each other excitedly as they watched me eat my meal, daring me to open them. The three cookies shone and looked at me with doe eyes while I finished eating. I picked the first one up, opened it hesitantly, and read its contents: “Faith is knowing there is an ocean when you can only see the stream.” The next one read “Spend some time to search within yourself.” Licking my fingers from the previous two crunchy, thin, sweet cookies, I took a deep breath as I opened the third one. It was something I did not like. Something I did not want my future to hold. I ripped the small piece of paper into two and placed them in their final resting place: the trash. Yet now, the entity of this fortune comes back to haunt me months later as a reminder of what could have been, and whether my refusal had any influence over my fate.
It may sound easy and intuitive to think that in that moment when I ripped the fortune in two, I chose my future by rejecting one message and holding the other two close to me. I believed that by doing this, I had thrown the third fate away for eternity, and what the future holds is what I chose to keep. Yet, something about this felt wrong. It felt wrong how the discarded fortune still lingered in my thoughts and ran through my mind. I began to wonder whether this action was truly me exercising agency over my fate or rather a futile attempt at control. Forces of randomness, chance, and circumstance shape my fate as much as my decisions, so was it possible for me to truly avoid certain fortunes?
A few days ago, I looked at and thought about the remaining two fortunes, now taped above my desk with an array of other prints, drawings, and memories. And I thought to myself, even though I did not remember what the third fortune said, it still lingered on in my mind months later. I still think about the refusal I made that day, and what impact it indirectly had on my life today. This feeling can be compared to an everyday decision, such as trying a new coffee shop. When you analyze the menu and pick a coffee over the other, you keep a mental note of the sweet caramel taste of the one you chose, and it is likely that you will have forgotten most of the details about the drink you did not order, while the affectionate, sugary taste of the one you purchased and drank lingers in your mouth. However, you also might wonder what it would be like if you ordered the other one at that moment. We make intentional choices constantly, which also means that we make intentional refusals that leave us wondering what could have been.
This story about my three fortune cookies taught me that maybe I am not as in control of my life as I thought I was. I thought that I could just rip up the fortune, throw it away, and never think about it ever again. But now, months later, this fortune persists in my mind, whispering what could have been, though I cannot put a face or name to this fortune. The fortune made me realize that I was not really controlling fate by throwing out something so awful away, but I was instead avoiding a harsh reality. For a while, I felt stuck in the borderlands of a fortune that could have been proved wrong, could have been remembered, or could have told me a reality about myself. But I soon realized that feeling trapped in those borderlands and longing for an escape itself is me longing for control I cannot have. I have realized that sitting with uncertainty and the unknown instead of hiding behind the facade of false control is more beneficial to my mind and soul, no matter how scary it may seem. I used to constantly idealize a perfect day every morning in which everything goes according to plan, but I have now realized I will never be fulfilled at the end of each day with this mentality. On that “perfect” day that follows the circumstances of life, I used to imagine everything unfolding in the exact lines and verses I wrote in my head. Yet, as much as I follow the day I wrote, there still exists that thought of what if I would have liked another movie better than the one I chose, or what if I would have enjoyed the cafe’s matcha more than the caramel frappuccino. And on this perfect day, it is impossible that everything will happen as I want, and I cannot just tear up and toss things that do not go according to plan. By freeing myself from such a restrictive mindset based on perfection and the desire for control and by trusting my own decisions, I feel content with letting life choose for me sometimes. Not knowing what hides behind the door of refusal is not meant to make me toss and turn at night, but is instead a reminder that life will run and skip along the spontaneous path it is meant to.
