I was at a picnic yesterday afternoon, and someone brought fortune cookies. Everyone else got the usual vague-but-positive predictions of good things to come. I got “Minimize expectations in order to avoid being disappointed.” We all had a good chuckle at that — especially when we went around the table adding “in bed” to the end of everyone’s fortune.

Then I grabbed a second fortune cookie, because who wants to be stuck with a fortune like that? But when I cracked it open, I found I had received the same fortune as before: “Minimize expectations in order to avoid being disappointed.”

I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere.