Fortune is a funny thing. The last fortune I received came on New Year's Eve, from a Chinese fortune cookie: "All the preparation you've done will finally be paying off!"It's been about 3 months since then, give or take a few days; and each month, without fail, my fortune cookie fortune has come true.
Around the middle of January, I received the phone call that announced my acceptance to graduate school for next year; near the end of this month, I found out I was accepted to the study abroad program in Paris, France for the upcoming summer. Although, I'm not sure if an occurrence of equally fortuitous nature will present itself sometime in March.
So, I guess my fortune cookie fortune was right, but was it really fortune if I created all the outcomes myself? Everything that happened was a result of "all the preparation [I'd] done" and the hard work I've put in over the past few years. It seems as though we actually have the ability to alter our destinies - but, why, then, can't we always get things to turn out the way we want them to?
Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French journalist and previous editor-in-chief of French Elle, once wrote that it seemed as though his "whole life was nothing but a string of those small near misses: a race whose result we know beforehand but in which we fail to bet on the winner." Sometimes, the hand we're dealt is just that - near misses, but also serendipitously-seized opportunities.
The life of Bauby was, however, anything but completely fortuitous. After suffering a massive stroke at the age of 43, Bauby was "paralyzed from head to toe... his mind intact... imprisoned in his own body, unable to speak or move" (Bauby 4). Only by blinking his left eyelid could he communicate with others; this is how he dictated his entire memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Interestingly enough, Bauby's memoir was originally dictated and written in French, so it has cultural and linguistic significance for me, especially now that I'll be going to Paris this upcoming summer. The book has since been translated into a number of other languages - most notably into English, by Jeremy Leggatt - and its French film adaption was nominated for 4 Oscars in 2007. Bauby's writing not only allows readers to gain insight into the inner-workings of a patient with "Locked-In Syndrome", but also offers a significant amount of background on the French healthcare system and the layout of Paris. Perfect literary material to prepare me for my neuroscience classes, my Parisian trip, and whatever else fortune might have in store for me.
*Quotes from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominque Bauby; image is original artwork by yours truly.
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