After decades on the job, the
head writer for the Happy Go Lucky Fortune Cookie Company had grown
disillusioned with the job. He had already run through all the clever little
phrases and pithy proverbs he could come up with. He had exhausted the Analects by Confusious, half the book
of Proverbs, Poor Richard’s Almanac, pieces of Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, and though he was ashamed to admit it, the
occasional summer blockbuster. He was now officially completely out of ideas.
“What am I going to do?” he
asked himself, pounding his head against his unproductive desk and crushing a
cookie in the process.
Today’s rain is tomorrow’s whiskey, its fortune said.
“Good point,” he replied. “I
need a drink.”
Grabbing his oldest and
dearest friend, he hit the local pub determined to drink until he found a
solution or he lost the floor, whichever came first. Five whiskey sours in and
he had already unloaded the whole of his problem to his ever patient, ever
drunk friend.
“Work,” his friend muttered
with a shake of his head.
Yeah, thought the writer.
Work. That said it all.
And that was the solution. He
didn’t need words of wisdom or wit to fill his fortunes. Advice was one of
those things everyone gave freely, even when a person would much rather just
have a little understanding, someone to say, “I know what you’re going through
because I’ve been there too.”
He hailed a cab and raced
back to the office, diving head first into what would become his most
successful series of fortunes, each one only a single word to ensure it could
be felt by the most number of people. One word typed with a sigh and a shake of
the head to say, “Stranger, I don’t know you, but what you’re going through?
We’ve all been there. You’re not alone.”
- Originally mailed to R.Y. in Pennsylvania
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