Help, I'm a prisoner of Chinese fortune cookie philosophy!

[gwalla]

Went out for Chinese with my folks tonight (King Yen, a restaurant that's been in the neighborhood for ages). Food was good of course. We had some fun with the fortune cookies, though.

Mine was "You are incredibly clever. Others often come to you for advice." I showed it to my folks, proudly exclaiming "I are smart!"

My mom's was "You will take a chance on something in the near future." She followed up with "You have been warned."

My dad's was "Isolating yourself from others will not prevent you from being hurt." I said, "Yeah, because nobody will be around to say, 'Hey, look out for that tree!'"

There was a fourth cookie. The fortune there was "Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want." My response was "But...if you want what you have, but you have it...then...don't you have what...ARGH! My head!" My dad said that he was disturbed by the fact that he almost understood it. My mom said he was becoming enlightened. He said, "Yeah, because the light will be on all night while I'm scratching my head. Because I need to see to scratch my head."

And so, to bed.

Comments

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Zombie fortune cookie!

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

Happiness is wanting what you have, not having what you want.
Actually, that's not that hard to follow without creating circular reasoning issues if you allow for different definitions of want. It's pretty much a rewording of the Second Noble Truth of Buddha: that the cause of suffering and misery is desire. If you do not desire other things - if you only want what you have - Buddha claims you will be happy, however if you desire other things then you will become unhappy.

[derakon.livejournal.com]

I personally find that oftentimes, the pleasure I get out of imagining what I could do with a new toy is greater than the pleasure I get from the toy itself. I blame this on the easy nature of daydreams - that is, everything effortlessly works out perfectly every time. Reality is rather different.

This isn't to say that I don't enjoy the things I have; they get heavily used to. But it's fun to imagine what things I could do with new toys, even if I never actually get them.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Cookie fortunes are weird. Some border on being koans, but probably result from a bad grasp of English on the writers' parts.