When I first thought about the prompt of fortune cookie, I was thinking about the idea of finding a fortune from a fortune cookie tucked into a book. A fortune that would one day make sense. A fortune that would come true. And the fortune that came to my mind was, “one day the living room of your heart will be full.”
This led me to think about how I spent so much time with my nose in a book when I was in college. So many evenings in Barnes and Noble. I lived on campus, and how much money I would have saved if I would have just gone to the library instead of buying new books. But to go to campus in the evening, alone, meant admitting I didn’t have friends with whom to do something a bit less nerdy. My friends were from my boarding school and they were all at other schools around the country. I loved my classes in college though. Everything began to seem connected. The books I read for school connected to a book I would pick up at Barnes and Noble connected to a conversation I would have with my therapist connected to a passage from a book that my theology professor would hand us to read and so on. Even though I often felt very alone, I began to believe that the authors of the books I was reading understood the path I was walking on. They understood feeling like you might be the only person to see the world in a certain way. But because the connections of the writing sometimes washed over me in such a joyous way, I was certain I was not the only person who saw things the way that I did.
(disclaimer alert) At that time in my life, I did have people who I know loved me (and still do), but this is more about the loneliness that is simply inherently part of who I am.
During the last year and half of reading blogs and the last (almost) year of blogging, I am sometimes overwhelmed in the best of ways because it feels as though this loneliness is lifting. One aspect of being “friends” with the authors on your bookshelf is that there is not interaction. They can share things with you and you can learn, but you can’t really talk about it. With the blogging community I feel a part of, there is a connection, an interaction, between the reader and the writer. You can let people know when their writing resonates deep within you. This is pure magic at times.
Even though it sometimes feels like the people who get me have simply appeared inside a laptop instead of sitting on a bookshelf, I am starting to feel as though the fortune is coming true.
This led me to think about how I spent so much time with my nose in a book when I was in college. So many evenings in Barnes and Noble. I lived on campus, and how much money I would have saved if I would have just gone to the library instead of buying new books. But to go to campus in the evening, alone, meant admitting I didn’t have friends with whom to do something a bit less nerdy. My friends were from my boarding school and they were all at other schools around the country. I loved my classes in college though. Everything began to seem connected. The books I read for school connected to a book I would pick up at Barnes and Noble connected to a conversation I would have with my therapist connected to a passage from a book that my theology professor would hand us to read and so on. Even though I often felt very alone, I began to believe that the authors of the books I was reading understood the path I was walking on. They understood feeling like you might be the only person to see the world in a certain way. But because the connections of the writing sometimes washed over me in such a joyous way, I was certain I was not the only person who saw things the way that I did.
(disclaimer alert) At that time in my life, I did have people who I know loved me (and still do), but this is more about the loneliness that is simply inherently part of who I am.
During the last year and half of reading blogs and the last (almost) year of blogging, I am sometimes overwhelmed in the best of ways because it feels as though this loneliness is lifting. One aspect of being “friends” with the authors on your bookshelf is that there is not interaction. They can share things with you and you can learn, but you can’t really talk about it. With the blogging community I feel a part of, there is a connection, an interaction, between the reader and the writer. You can let people know when their writing resonates deep within you. This is pure magic at times.
Even though it sometimes feels like the people who get me have simply appeared inside a laptop instead of sitting on a bookshelf, I am starting to feel as though the fortune is coming true.
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I love that this year I have been introduced to the joys of writing prompts.
As I was driving home after spending a wondrous afternoon with acumamakiki, I was thinking about how amazing it is to feel such a deep connection with someone when you meet them in person for the first time. Then I was reflecting on waking up to three delightful emails from Meg. And even though I felt a tinge of sadness that these women do not live down the street from me, I still was smiling from ear to ear at the realization that I am not quite as alone as I think I am. And some where in the midst of all of those thoughts, the fortune “one day the living room of your heart will be full” came to me. Another layer to this prompt is that in thinking about all of this an idea for a piece of fiction came to me as well. I am still working on that but will share soon.
To read what others felt prompted to share about fortune cookies click over to sunday scribblings.
