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Friday, March 15, 2013

too tough cookie will crumble

a great reorganizing is happening in my apartment. whilst reshuffling, dusting, and tossing chipped glassware, i came across an assortment of fortune cookie fortunes. my heart sang. i've always had an affinity for fortunes. what's better than opening food and finding writing?

(no stop right there. for the purposes of this blog, the answer is nothing.)

i used to save old fortunes, until it became horderesque and i threw the collection away (most of them). my first novel idea grew out of a fortune cookie fortune. one christmas i even bought mean fortunes for family stocking stuffers.

i reserved this one for myself. it's funny!
 
i've always felt that fortunes truly relate to the person that cracks them open. i mean you could have picked any from the pile, but you chose that one. and seeing as i can read a fortune in just about anything, it should come as no surprise that when five little slips of paper fell from the top of my cupboard yesterday (told ya. horder) I knew they would be totally relevant to me right this second.



welcome change. check. discontent is the first necessity of progress. you don't have to tell me and by the way, welcome change. fortune has, in fact, been smiling on me helloooo knock me off my feet chef mate and new jobby. an aim in life yaaaawn blahblahblah. yes, yes, sing and rejoice and thank goodness. i already know my aim in life. ima writer.

these were all good and true, but it was like i was being told mayonnaise makes every food better or that i'll hear Beyonce's Love on Top no matter what night it is at the club (i wanted to reference Rack City, but that song is too dirty to hyperlink).

and then ooh there it was: The care and sensitivity you show towards others will return to you.

um. hi.

so i know i've mentioned this before, but my new job entails managing. know me is to know i'm a people person. so managing is all well and good until you encounter a problem where warm and sunny doesn't carry you through. the toughest call is not necessarily when to be tough, but how to go about enacting toughness.

the other night, i was no-nice-about-it tough with someone. it was late. they were being absurd. and tough tough felt right for the situation. i was a little conflicted about it later, tho honestly? telling someone what i thought and what they could do about it and there's the door? it felt great.

the very next day, in my real non-manager life, i went to a friend with good news, caught her on a bad day, and was treated to a similar dressing down. even prior to the fortune cookie, i felt like the care and sensitivity I showed someone else, came immediately back and bit me. so what's the moral?

be good to people. and when the situation calls for tough, be fair and thoughtful with it. maybe the snazzy comebacks make for a great scene in a movie (which, btw, no one is writing corrie), but they're not at all fun to experience when they come back around.

and now, back to singing and rejoicing...

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