Fortune Cookies

A dear friend and I had delicious Chinese dinner saturday night. The best part for me of eating Chinese food, is the fortune cookie! My fortune was: Fear is the darkroom where pessimism is developed. After that we came back to my place and were joined by Ender. So as is custom for a Halloween weekend, we started talking about scary events that we have been a part of. We talked about seeing our loved ones pass away, about stalkers stalking and visitors from the other side. On Sunday I saw this show that spoke about rags to riches story and the one common theme that all the rich people had was the ability to overcome their fear. For instance, one story was about how this person sold encyclopedias door to door. Essentially the message he wanted to convey was that successful people are those who give the same enthusiasm on the 51^st door as on the 1^st door. Successful people face the fear of getting rejected with optimism. This brings me to something Stewie, Ender and I did on Monday.

Stewie, Ender and I went trick or treating. For Stewie and Me this was our first ever! Needless to say we were all nervous, with Stewie feeling embarrassed that he had to part take in this nonsense. As we approached our first door, my heart was beating fast. I couldn’t tell my friends that I was nervous about ringing the door bell and saying the three words. I couldn’t tell them that I feared that the person behind the door would deny us of candies and remind us that the candies were for kids. I couldn’t tell them that I felt that I couldn’t be strong for all of us. Despite all of these thoughts running through my head, I rang the bell. We all stood there in silence to what seemed a very long time… And then someone came out and gave us our share of the candy. I was so nervous that I don’t even remember whether the person was a male or female. All I remember is starting noticing who the people behind the doors were after the first house. I remember that our second house had a young father who came out to give us candy while cuddling his little darling.  

I wanted to go for trick-or-treat not for the candies and perhaps not so much for the experience. I wanted to see whether I could gather the guts to ring the door bells and ask people for something that was not meant for me but was desired by me. I don’t know if this makes sense.

To me seeing people support three adults in their attempt to live a part of childhood that they didn’t get to, made me firmly believe that if you go and put yourself out there the world will embrace you. Some will give you the dirty looks but at the end the faces you will remember are the ones that were kindest to you.

Thank you, Austinites for teaching me this very important lesson. I know someday I will use this for greater good.

Sending positive energy out to everyone,

Garfield