The Meaning of Life in Two Lines (+ Lotto Numbers!)

Maybe you’ve heard my take on fortune cookies. They give you one of these cookies after every meal at most any Chinese restaurant, right? Well, what’s so fortunate about receiving a cookie you’re basically paying to receive?? If I'd buy a Snickers bar at the 7-11, I wouldn’t consider myself lucky for having received a Snickers bar (I would consider myself stupid for buying crappy chocolate) (which I’ve done, by the way – TV told me to do it). And I don’t think it’s very lucky either to receive a variation of a vague and generic message that has been reprinted a bazillion times. So I play a little game. Every time I get a fortune cookie, I look at the Lottery numbers, and if I find my favorite number among them, then I consider the message to be of a particular relevance to me. I think of it as plugging the fortune into the cookie.

Of course, I’ve never found any useful heaven-sent message in a fortune cookie (last cookie said: “Ask not what your fortune cookie can do for you but what you can do for your fortune cookie.” Thank you, Donald Lau). But man, have I looked for one. I collect pieces of paper I find on the streets. My notebook is filled with stickers I ripped from some wall, considering they were put on my way for me to keep. I think of repeated chance encounters as the best grounds for asking someone out. So you can say I’m big on serendipity.

And this is what I’ve learned: serendipity’s a bitch.

I’ve come to understand something. I’m desperate for meaning, so I’ve been looked far and yon for an epiphany – a moment of clarity of purpose, a beautiful revelation. More than once, I’ve sought for that revelation in my writing, waiting for everything to turn miraculously clear. So I would write. And when I finished, to my disappointment, there would be no new vision or resolution. It would seem that another hopeful session of writing had once again served no purpose. So I stopped writing for a long time.

I’ve been promising to myself that I would start a blog for a long time now. Actually, I set up this domain months ago. So why hadn’t I written the first post? For one, self-expectations made it too difficult to start. But mostly, it was lack of faith on the rewards of writing, and lack of clarity of purpose.

So maybe there is no revelation, no salvation in writing. Maybe there is and one day I’ll bump into it. But I’ve realized that being too worried with finding meaning in my writing has kept me from what I wanted when I first thought of starting a blog - a space for self-expression.

For all my bitching, I always find myself typing again. I haven’t found that lucid understanding of reality, but at least I’ve come to understand some of the reasons why I feel the need to sit and write this blog. I’ll write because I want to make sentences out of vague ideas, and find out what they read. I’ll write because I want to share my thoughts, and argue it all with you all.

So it's ok if there aren't any grand fortune-cookie revelations. That's cool. A little ranting will be enough for now.