Am I a fortune junkie?

So this morning I pulled out my wallet to do the obligatory balancing of the checkbook and found the two fortunes from my visit to Pei Wei yesterday with my friend Vanessa. As usual, I read them and shared them with my dear friend. The first made me smile, "Be prepared to accept a wondrous opportunity in the days ahead!" As I snacked on the cookie (I love the cookie as much as the strip of paper inside), I chatted with Vanessa about our upcoming Energy Empathy class we're co-teaching July 12. And then almost on cue, I opened cookie 2. With a laugh, I read it aloud: "One learns most from teaching others."

I tucked these into the clear plastic holder where my driver's license lives so I could see them often. Mind you, I had two other fortunes in there already: "Many successes will accompany you this year," and "Success is a journey not a destination." (So together do they mean I will, in fact, just have lots of journeys this year? hmmm...) But liking my two new fortunes better I decided to move the older ones to my secondary fortune treasure chest...the change pouch in my wallet.

I unzipped the pouch and started tugging on the white papers sandwiched between the nickels, quarters and dimes. I pulled. And I pulled. And holy crap...there are more?! So now I'm sitting here with my pile of 13 wrinkled, coin-stained quips to live by (at the risk of divulging just how crazy I really am...I even went so far as to date some of them...haha):

The limit to your abilities is where you place it.
Trust your intuition.
A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection. (10.11.07)
Every person is the architect of his or her own fortune. (10.11.07)
There will be many surprises: unexpected gains are likely. (10.11.07)
Great acts of kindness will befall you in coming months.
You will become more passionate and determined about your vision. (8.10.07)
Your love of life can carry you through any circumstance.
Don't be surprised by the emergence of undiscovered talents!
Be assertive when decisive action is needed.
There is beauty in simplicity. (6.8.08)
The simplest answer is to act. (6.8.08)
In dreams and in life, nothing is impossible. (6.8.08)

Staring at my fortunes, I am wondering if I really look to these little white papers with my lucky numbers and words like bean sprout, ship, fish, and eggplant scribbled on the back in Chinese to guide my life? To give me insight? Am I a fortune junkie? Now that I think about it, I wonder why I've horded them? I don't really ever go back and read them.

No doubt, there are some great platitudes among those strips. But sometimes I wonder if I spend so much time looking for confirmation and affirmation outside myself, like in these fortunes and my beloved astrology readings, that I forget what I really know? I forget to listen to the lessons and guidance of my own inner voice.

Last night, I watched this odd, poorly acted, low-budget movie called, "Forgiving the Franklins." It's really not worth going into the details of the plot but essentially three of the family members of this uber-Christian family lose their 'good Christian values' after a traffic accident. The self-loathing teenage daughter is the remaining believer of the family and prays throughout for God to change her family back and save her. After having an epiphany of sorts, the last frame of the movie is the girl sitting on a bus saying to herself, "God, if I would have known your voice sounded just like mine all of this could have been avoided."

The truth of her realization (at least truth for me) was a nice reminder. I don't have any great take-aways for you today. Maybe if nothing else, my fortune collection is simply a fun reminder from the universe...or from the 79-year-old woman sitting with a cigarette in hand printing these strips of paper, laughing as she thinks about fortune junkies like me looking to these sheets of paper for clues about my life. And maybe at the end of the day, that's what I most need...silly reminders to trust myself, enjoy life's simplicity and believe that wondrous opportunity really is on its way to me. Well, in that case, surprise and delight me!