Many years ago, when I lived in New York, I opened a fortune cookie and was perplexed by the fortune. It read:
Your luck has changed completely today.
The problem with it should be obvious, but just in case it isn’t: How do I know what my luck has changed from and to? Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times, it isn’t really.
I taped the fortune to my computer monitor and pondered it from time to time.
The next time I ordered Chinese food, I received the same fortune:
Your luck has changed completely today.
It goes without saying that I went from perplexed to utterly baffled, as my luck had now done a complete 360 turn, but I still didn’t know where I had started and thus, where I had ended up.
I think you know what my fortune said the next time I ordered Chinese food.
Your luck has changed completely today.
I taped the three fortunes in a neat column on my computer monitor. It was a subject of much discussion among visitors to my office. Where did it start? Where will it end? How would I know? One visitor helpfully suggested I could solve the whole problem by simply not ordering any more Chinese food.
I still wonder, but I think I might have actually have figured it out, finally.
The message was actually the three fortunes together, and what they meant was this: Your luck can change completely, in just a moment, and you’ll never see it coming or know the reason why.
