only connect. and ... maybe ... listen.

Intuition by Susan Piver (Trust 30 Prompt 14)

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

• If you could picture your intuition as a person, what would he or she look like? If you sat down together for dinner, what is the first thing he or she would tell you?

My intuition looks like Emma Thompson as Margaret in Howard's End. Stayed. Lovely. Old-fashioned and proper, though she's not a fan of funny hats. She's earnest, long-suffering and generally overlooked until the shit hits the fan. She's of immense value, if only people (I) would listen to her wisdom. 

I'd love to sit down with her - either my intuition or Emma Thompson herself - thought they'd be two very different conversations. Mostly, to my intuition, I'd make some vague apology for pretending not to hear her concerns. I'd makes some even vaguer promise to do better in the future. And I'd thank her for providing almost infallible good guidance when I have listened.

And then she'd tell me to ease up on myself. That I'm doing the best I can every day. And that slowing down a little will go a long way to making her voice clearer for me. And she'd remind me, in her best Margaret tones, to

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer."

If I sat down with Emma Thompson, on the other hand, I'd say wear fewer hats. Don't let them put you in a fat suit. I'm sorry that Alan Rickman was such a cad in Love Actually. And she'd say not to be a dolt, and that she's not the characters she plays. And she'd chuckle and sing "Hey Nonny Nonny."