I am a person of simple pleasures. I still freak out like a little kid when someone gives me a sticker. Don’t even get me started on temporary tattoos. I love sprinkles a little too much. Especially if they are rainbow or sparkly. I have an undying love for public transportation of any kind, but ESPECIALLY the bus. (Such a rush! Who am I going to meet?? Will there be any crazies that day?? Who knows?!)  In other words, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. Like, at all. My current Simple Pleasure are the fortune cookies at my dining hall. It doesn’t matter what meal I get. I always make sure to get a fortune cookie (or 3) with it. I always get some side eyes as I secure my stash for the day, but it makes me happy so whatever. 

I don’t eat fortune cookies because I love the taste or anything. (I mean, does anyone? Fortune cookies are kind of gross. Would it really be hard for fortune cookie companies to add some rainbow sprinkles or chocolate or something?) Even the quality, non-dining hall fortune cookies lie somewhere on the spectrum of Kind Of Gross. I also don’t eat them because they look appealing. Why are they yellow? What are they even made of? What’s with the shape? Questionable taste and presentation aside, the real reason why I love fortune cookies has nothing to do with the cookie itself. Really, I am fascinated with the idea that someone out there decided to mess with us by predicting our futures in cookie-form. I have so many questions for them. I think this person, whoever they were, might be my personal hero. Call me crazy, but I find fortune cookies to be a little too accurate to my life. Like, one time I got a fortune cookie that said,

Your Financial Gains In Life Are About to Begin

And then later that day I found 5 dollars on the sidewalk!! You can NOT tell me that was just a coincidence.

Anyway, after finishing class for the day, I made my daily rounds at Nelson Dining Hall, picking up my fortune cookie to go with my spaghetti for the day. (it’s a weird pairing, but something about the combination of cookies that provoke intellectual thought and marinara sauce just works). I always open my fortune cookie on my walk back to the dorm, partially because the walk back is a little long and I’m borderline hangry at that point, and partially because I’m genuinely curious as to what today’s fortune is. I dug around my bag, pulled out the cookie, took it out of it’s plastic wrapping, careful not to crush it completely. I broke it in half, smoothed out the small slip of paper and held it up to the light, squinting slightly to read the message printed on it

Rough Times are Behind You

 Normally I ponder the message on my way up Morton Hill back to my dorm, for a brief moment and then I go on with my day. This one stuck with me the rest of the evening, the next day, and yes, even as I am typing this right now. It wasn’t so much a fortune, but rather a statement. Rough times are behind me. “Aren’t fortunes supposed to be about the future?” I thought, slightly out of breath as I reached the final grueling steps of the hill by my dorm. 

DISCLAIMER: Originally, when I sat down to write this, I wanted to talk about how I used to be in quarantine at my house, and now that I am at college my life has dramatically improved, and how those hard times are behind me, and that’s why the fortune stuck with me so much, some inspirational stuff, blah blah blah. But as I kept writing, as I kept coming back to this piece,  I realized maybe my experiences weren’t exactly how I originally thought of them. 

You see, quarantine and taking online classes for the semester was a rough time. I remember those days filled with confusion and conflict like I had never felt so intensely. Days that spilled into evenings that felt like they would never end as I sat in my room wondering if I would ever see an end to this thing any time soon. In other words: it was pretty bad. 

But were these times all so bad? As I think about that period of time from where I stand now, I’ve started to let go of the intensity of these emotions, as they mellow out with time. In fact, during those months, I had some of the best moments of my life. I remember the time I went camping in the Grand Tetons with my dad and uncle over the summer. Looking up at the vast mountain ranges before me during the day and the clear, starry sky at night, I was truly dazzled. It was all so otherworldly. It sounds cheesy, because pretty much anyone who has ever been to a national park will go on and on about how grateful it made them, how small they felt in the vastness of it all, etc. But people say those things because they’re true. In that moment, looking at the sky above me and feeling the cool earth on my feet below me, I forgot I was going through a Rough Time. In fact, that was probably one of the single best moments of my life. Even during the lockdown, I found moments of joy throughout my days. I loved cooking meals and eating them with my family talking about our days, the good, the bad, and even the mundane moments that occupy the time in between. I remember those quarantine walks we would go on around the pond, with the crisp March air hitting the back of my neck. I remember two hour long Facetime calls to my friends, where we’d all talk about our own Rough Times and ask about each other’s.  Every day wasn’t always good, but even when things flat-out sucked, there was something good about every day.

Sometimes my days aren’t really all that bad or good. I’m an emotionally driven person, but really, not everything has to have some larger meaning. Some days, in good times or in bad, there are times where nothing of significance happens. I wake up, I do my silly little tasks, and I go to bed. Sometimes I do nothing productive whatsoever. I’ll just sit there and watch five episodes of Grey’s Anatomy because what else is there to do? I have days like this in the Good Times AND in the Rough Times. I don’t really know what to call these times, so I’ll just call them Eh times.

Now, my life is completely different. I thought I would go back to college, returning back to a sense of normalcy, and the truth is, I didn’t. We still wear masks, class is still mostly online. And I changed too. The things I took for granted the first year of college-like going to get coffee with friends or late night dorm talks with Grace, my roommate, I look at with a new-found appreciation. Every day feels like an adventure-even if that adventure is just called “Going to Walmart with my friends listening to the same song over and over until we get there”. I’d call these some Pretty Amazing Times. But even still, in this part of life I consider to be one of my best times, I have struggles. Take last week for example. I accidentally threw away my whole wallet out with the trash resulting in a very embarrassing dumpster dive behind my dorm. I don’t know about you, but personally I would classify this as a Rough Time.

All jokes aside, even in these mostly Good Times, I fall down sometimes (both literally and figuratively.) I struggle with overthinking (as you can probably tell from this essay about the meaning of literal fortune cookies). I say and do hurtful things to the people I care about.  I fail quizzes from time to time. I am still trying to figure out Who the Heck I am and What I’m Doing Here Exactly. Basically, all my rough times can be summed up as being a nineteen year old, and more accurately, a human being.

As I look into the future, I don’t see only Good Times, or  Rough Times. I more see times that are somewhere on a spectrum. Some mostly good, some mostly bad, and some times just eh. 

As much as it pains me to say it, and as much as I want to believe the magic of the fortune cookies at Nelson, my fortune cookie was-dare I say-wrong. Well, not entirely- it’s just a partial truth. Rough times are behind me. Rough times lie ahead of me. Good times do too. In any case, the life I am able to live is pretty cool, dumpster dives and all. My experiences are beautiful because they make me me. 

Maybe I’m doing that thing again where I read into this all a little too deep. After all, it really is just a fortune cookie from my college dining hall. Or maybe, there is something a little more to it. You can decide for yourself.

I picked up yet another fortune cookie at Nelson today. This one read:

Life will Soon Become Interesting

I like this one a little more. To me, life is interesting for all the Good Times, the Rough Times, and the eh times to come.