The Pancakes Oracle

It’s breakfast time and you stumble down the stairs to the kitchen to find something to eat: maybe a granola bar, a packet of instant oatmeal, a lone apple going soft in the back of the fridge. Just something - whatever, really - that’s available to put in your stomach. As you come onto the landing, however, you notice a strange golden glow coming from the kitchen. The smell of something warm and sweet washes over you which is strange, because you’re in the house alone. You can’t explain it but you just know, somehow, that whatever is waiting for you in the kitchen is important for you, right here and now.

You walk through the doorway, ready for anything. There, standing at your stove with a spatula in hand, is the ancient spirit of a pancake. It turns and greets you with a giant steaming stack of pancakesl Looking closer, they’re your very favorite kind.

You have found The Pancakes oracle, and it has a story to share with you today.

The Pancakes Oracle says:

You’ve got some good stuff here. You have a stove for cooking things, a spatula for flipping things, a plate for eating off of, a good mug for drinking your coffee or tea each morning. You have a chair to sit in and a table to sit at, some reading material maybe or a phone to scroll through for the day’s interests. This place, this experience you’ve assembled here for yourself is nice. So what I’m going to say next is meant with absolutely no disrespect to what you already have.

You should ask for more.

It’s not that what you have isn’t good enough. It’s that good enough is just the starting baseline. There are no limits on what you can ask for, and there is no shame in asking for it. The universe, the divine, the higher power - you pick your own word for it - it’s not on a budget. It doesn’t even know what a budget is.

Do you think a budget was involved when oceans unfathomably deep with creatures we will never have the full count of emerged on Earth’s scene? Nah.

Do you think there was a budget for painting the sunset or rainbows or the infinite colors of natural world? Definitely not.

There was more than enough material to goof around with and if you ever doubt it, just look at the millipede: the very definition of “more” in legs. Or what about the sea cucumber, the axolotl, the platypus?

These aren’t the kinds of animals you create when you’re on a budget.

There’s a whole world of more out there for you, too. Ways to you nurture yourself more. Ways to honor yourself more. Ways to celebrate yourself more. They aren’t actually that far out of reach. They’re just beyond good enough.

We could start with you having this big stack of your favorite pancakes for breakfast instead of the crumbly stale granola bar from the bottom of the pantry drawer. One starts a day that’s good enough, nothing wrong with it. You did the function, you fed your system, you checked the box. The other starts a day that feels like it was specially made for you. All you did was choose more.

It seems small. Someone else might say: Who cares what you had for breakfast?

But those choices - whether you accept something that’s just fine or you ask for more of what you really want instead - they add up over time.

It doesn’t have to be pancakes every morning. Variety is another way of asking for more. It doesn’t have to be pancakes at all. Listening to what you actually want in the moment - not just what seems decadent to the outside world - is another way of asking for more.

More of what makes you sing in the shower, more of what you really want, more of what makes you feel like you, more of what reminds you that you’re alive, more of expanding what you hold to open new possibilities you may have never even considered.

The next time the world around you holds up a pitcher of syrup to pour over your experience and goes: “Say when…” There is no syrup budget it. Ask for your very favorite, then let it pour.

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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 Story Studio.

Visit the Bailey Sends Word Story Studio site for more stories about being a person on this planet - your story, our collective story, and the human story.