Old Crocks and Old Stuff

As I was on the threshold of boredom with academic life, I had an "epiphany", or as a dictionary might define it, "a moment of revelation or insight".

I can't imagine that satisfied people have epiphanies. If people are contented with their lives, are happy in their work, joyful in their families, and satisfied in their station, in another word, delusional, they aren't candidates for an epiphany.

An epiphany is a suddenly revealed door to the outside. It isn't necessarily a new door. It's usually one we just haven't seen. In some ways it reminds me of the obscure answer to some unsolved crossword clue. It's unseen yet the answer is heating up in that convection oven we call a brain and then, without reference to anything in the immediate vicinity, the bell goes off.

In most stories of epiphanies, the sudden shock of knowledge results in immediate action or understanding. I doubt these fairy tales. Most opportunities for change, no matter how clearly revealed, are ignored.

Check yourself out: At what point, standing on the mighty Titanic, would you have leapt into a bobbing fragile lifeboat? At what point, watching books burn and storefronts smashed, would you as a German abandon your pleasant home and your own country for a refugee's life of roaming? If one waits to see how the game will play out, it may be too late.

No, the only epiphanies we report are the ones we've acted on. And, most often, we act on them because the cost hasn't been very great. For most people, I suspect, even the use of the word is overly dramatic. Too embarrassingly religious in context, I guess, as is the word "revelation". Yet, acting on an idea that may become life changing is a very consequential thing, and the new understanding and experiences that it brings should be treated with the utmost respect. So, if a person says that he or she had an epiphany, and you laugh at him, you're an idiot.

I've had two epiphanies. The first came with the first pages of a mystery novel. The second came while standing in front of a melodramatic painting. I have been grateful every day since that I understood what these seemingly trivial experiences offered.

My next blog will talk about them.