The Chewing Gum Oracle
You come across a table with stars in silver decorating its top, empty except a pile of unopened foil gum wrappers on one corner. You can’t explain it, but somehow you know you must sit at the table a while. Something there is important to you right here, right now.
As you take a seat and adjust your chair, you look down to see a spirit made of used chewing gum stretching its gooey self from underneath the table to stick to your pant leg.
You have found the Chewing Gum Oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.
The Chewing Gum Oracle says:
Many things lose their flavor over time. Some things lose their flavor more quickly than others, more quickly than you would like. Some flavors we want to last forever, and they simply can’t. They have a finite reserve of sugar and when it’s gone, it’s gone. Like that thing you’ve been chewing on for a long time and now getting zero enjoyment from. A flavorless remnant of what used to be.
There are lots of people out there chewing on spent a flavor. They turn it over and over, probing for new pockets of sweetness where there are none left. Even as it turns gross and triggers a gag reflex. Even as their mouth starts to reject the old, spent husk of what once was. Even then, so many people keep chewing long after the flavor is gone. They do this with jobs, with habits, with routines, with hobbies, with all kinds of things that once were fun and right and just… aren’t anymore.
But there’s nothing wrong with something having run its course. You don’t chew gum after it’s lost its flavor. Gum gets disgusting fast when the sugar is gone, when the taste isn’t there anymore, when the time to be chewing it is just up. There’s a moment where the experience goes from delicious to the beginnings of repulsion, the moment you take a good extra chomp just to be sure, then throw the gum away.
You definitely wouldn’t take the gum out, stick it somewhere, and then come back to pop it back in your mouth again later. The gum may even look similar to when it was in your mouth bursting with spearmint or cinnamon or bubblegum or your favorite flavor. It may be the same color, still have your tooth marks in it, be the same shape and size. But you know, despite all appearances, that your time with it is over and if you try to ignore that, the experience will be disappointing to say the very least.
Just because you choose to let go of a particular thing that has forever lost its appeal, doesn’t mean life will be without flavor. In fact, the opposite: There are unchewed sticks of gum, new experiences, fresh flavors for you to choose from.
It’s the rule of gum: When the flavor is gone, it’s time to place it in the proper receptacle and choose something new to unwrap.
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Bailey Sends Word Storytelling Studio creates the Found Oracles cards, art, and stories.
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About the Oracles
Bailey Lewis - the voice behind and creator of Found Oracles - is an award-winning writer, multimedia storyteller, and owner of Bailey Sends Word Storytelling Studio.
Visit the studio site for more stories steeped in modern mythos - work exploring intuition, mystical encounters in the everyday, and how the stories we tell ourselves create our reality.