A self-fulfilling prophecy?
I have always been enamoured with fortune cookies and the like. You know, things like Magic 8-balls and books of answers that you are supposed to open at random to get the answer to your question. Usually, the fortunes they give you are entertaining and sometimes they hit rather close to home. Of course, there are times when they hit the nail right on the head.
I just had a fortune cookie tonight, and it had two fortunes in it. One was "Idleness is the holiday of fools" which I thought was pretty cool in and of itself, as I have been procrastinating on a contract/project for a little bit and relaxing a bit too much, so that was right on the money. The second was "Your persuasive nature makes you increasingly irresistable to others," which is also a bit vague, but it is also applicable to my general experience. I mean, my last few job assessments had that I was persuasive and the like, and I am usually able to convince people I know the value of my opinion and change their views on things, so it doesn't seem all that weird to get such a fortune by random chance and all, but sometimes the things they say are very fitting.
Now my question is this: Does it really matter what something like a fortune cookie actually says... isn't the fun in the interpretation itself, and isn't it human nature for even skeptics to try to connect things in a recognizable pattern? No matter what it says, isn't my mind going to subconsciously look for connections long after I've stopped consciously thinking about that moment... until an event happens that brings what was said back in a flash. If someone broke their toe the day after they read a fortune that said that they would soon experience a great pain, is the world fitting expectation set by the fortune? I'm not talking about fate or anything, merely that perhaps if you are expecting something to happen, you might subconsciously make it happen. I don't know....
Maybe I'm just overthinking this. After all, it's happened before. Anyway, here a little fortune cookie site online to play with, so you could perhaps find yourself a little mystified yourselves.