Anatomy Of A Superstition: When Your Eye ” Twitches “

Do you have a family superstition that crops from time to time? Something your parents or grandparents said or did continuously? Something that you yourself came to believe for no explicable reason? 

There is one superstition that I have grown up with. It concerns an involuntary eye spasm known colloquially as when your eye” twitches” without warning or reason. The superstition has multiple parts and meanings depending on which eye is affected:

• If your right eye jumps, you are going to hear good news. If your left eye jumps, you are going to hear bad news.
• If your right eye jumps, someone is speaking well of you. If your left eye jumps, someone is saying bad things about you.* (If you think of the name of people you know, when you name the right person—who is speaking badly about you—your eye will stop jumping
• If your right eye jumps, you’ll see someone you haven’t seen in a long time.
• If your left eye jumps, a loved one/friend is doing something behind your back.
• If your left eye jumps, a love one/friend may be in trouble.

There are additional variations to this theme, but all emphasize the dichotomy between the left and right eye in relation to bad versus good events.