Food for Thought by Daphne Oz

Whenever I go to Chinese restaurants, I find myself unusually drawn to the pithy one-liners that pop from my fortune cookies. Typically, I'm not a very superstitious person, but I like guessing at what "Expect the unexpected" might be referencing or how I should "Be ready for a surprise windfall."

I find them particularly compelling because — unlike horoscopes, fortunetellers and psychics — fortune cookies don't have the benefit of being able to read my facial expressions and body movements for clues, and they aren't telling me what I want to hear in exchange for a $10 tip. Their messages are limited to about 10 words, generally positive and always immutable; you choose the cookie, and the fortune it holds is yours.

Yet despite its total randomness and necessary vagueness, the clairvoyant cookie has a way of forcing us (against our will!) to search for corroborating evidence of its predictions in our lives, even if none exists.

Then again, sometimes that evidence does exist — whether because we're searching for it or because it was always meant to be. This chance of finding a truly prescient guide who can predict the future accurately is, of course, what keeps us coming back for more.

The question is whether you would actually want to know what is about to happen before it does. Whether the news is good or bad, waiting for the future to happen would almost certainly ruin the present. Moreover, does knowing ahead of time make you better- or worse-prepared to deal with something when it happens?

We don't have to be Miss Cleo to find oblique references to our lives in a fortune cookie's bite-sized kernel of wisdom, even if just for fun.

Universal, underlying truths can often be summarized into a few short words, and your mother probably did it best. Below is a catchphrase my mother repeated to us when we were kids, and it is my very first suggestion for what a "Mother Cookie" might read like — and if this isn't satisfying after chowing down on wonton soup and moo shu veggies, I don't know what is!

Mother Cookie says: "Do what you can."

What it means: We waste a lot of time feeling guilty and inadequate when we aren't able to cook dinner for our families multiple nights a week, don't have time to go to every practice and recital, forget to call old friends on their birthdays, and eat the candy bar we know we shouldn't at the office just because it was lying nearby.

These things happen, and they will happen again. The only thing you can do is focus on which, if any of them, make you feel happy and good and prioritize your time and actions accordingly. Part of being able to take care of others is taking care of ourselves first, and this is so often what we forget when we feel as if we owe our time elsewhere.

As for the candy bar, though I wouldn't recommend indulging too frequently, go ahead and relish it fully when you do. The emotional damage of harassing yourself for kicking caution to the wind is far more damaging than fats and sugars.

Daphne Oz is a co-host of ABC's "The Chew." To find out more about Daphne Oz and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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