WRITING PROMPT: What do hunches feel like? How do you know which ones to follow?
I wonder about hunches.
Are they divine guidance from on high
Or a physiological response in our gut from our unusual lunches?
Or pangs from muscle spasms from having done too many crunches?
Hunches feel like a subtle sensation of knowing mixed with a twisting butterfly banging around in my stomach cage saying “let me out”.
To let the butterfly out means to follow the hunch. To follow the hunch means to free my gut from its twisting, which I guess means it was the best thing.
Following the hunch means I follow the butterfly. The feeling leaves my stomach and grabs a hold of the knowing that flashed in my mind. The hunch is worth following when it makes me relentlessly curious. If I decide not to follow the butterfly returns to my stomach cage furious and like a bursting appendix it all suddenly becomes so serious. The dizzying butterfly doesn’t get tired so it flits around until I become delirious.
Butterflies have a life span of about two weeks and in my experience an unfollowed hunch has about the same life span. Intuitive promptings don’t just wait around to be followed. The benevolence of the universe seems to have it’s own plans and if its emissary the butterfly hunch can’t get me to follow its beautiful and captivating wing span into the mystery of the unknown it will, in a short span of time, fly off and find another host, emerging from another cocoon to follow it into the joy of being.
Because that seems to be where hunches lead: to glory
to solutions, to evolutions, to revolutions and to better endings to our story.
I’ve never once regretted following a hunch, but I’ve felt the sting of watching butterflies die in my stomach instead of being set free.
If you don’t follow you hunches you get lost in the woods but if you follow a hunch you are rewarded with a bunch and as they keep on coming, you suddenly keep on knowing, and then following hunches leads to an aura that’s glowing and a life that’s flowing.
I’m no detective, but I have a hunch that we’d all be better off following our stomach butterflies instead of naming them anxiety and following the dumb rules of society. But hey, that’s just a hunch, you can tell me where I’m wrong.
