This week my challenge prompt came from Jason Hughes.
It was this: A life lesson learned from an *extremely* unlikely source/event...
I challenged my girl Alyssa. Her response will be posted here shortly.
Here is my response to Jason's challenge to me. Enjoy!
I opened the fortune cookie and just stared at it. Really? Is that really the best fortune that you could give me, destiny? A tempting proposal will soon present itself to me? Not that riches await me or that I am about to embark on a life-changing adventure? A tempting proposal. Ok then.
Instead of throwing that little gem of fortune away with the rest of the take-out containers and soy sauce packets like I normally would, I hung on to it. I stuck it up on the front of my fridge with my dentist appointment reminder cards and bachelorette party invitations and other various items that I needed to be reminded of. And there it stayed. Held in place by a clear glass magnet with the word “Hope” written in pretty purple script on the inside.
I would glance at the fortune hanging by the “hope” magnet every once in a while on my way into the kitchen with my arms loaded down with groceries or rushing out the door on my way to an appointment and think “well, any damn time now would be nice!”
On days when I was feeling particularly cynical, I would question it outright, demanding to know exactly what its definition of “tempting” was because maybe I was just expecting too much and my tempting proposal had already been presented to me like a good Groupon I bought or the buy 1 get 1 deal I snatched up while shopping last week. I had a feeling neither of those were it though.
So I waited. Growing more disenchanted by the day, convinced that this foretold “tempting proposal” was nothing more than false hope printed in a stupid cookie that came with mediocre Chinese food.
I finally got sick of it mocking me with its red letters from the front of my refrigerator and took it down, tore it in half and threw it in the trash where it should have gone in the first place with the empty take-out containers and soy sauce packets.
And then I got the e-mail. There it was. My tempting proposal had indeed presented itself to me. And this was an offer I simply could not refuse. It was more than coincidence or luck. It was as my fortune foretold. Those red letters on the little white strip of paper that I pulled from the inside of a cookie that I got with mediocre Chinese food and had torn up and thrown away.
I dug those two raggedly torn little pieces of paper out of the trash and taped them back together with care. I didn’t want to jinx what I had just been given, a tempting proposal had indeed come my way and I owed it all to that fortune cookie.
