Epiphany and Nutella

I was the cynic who nurtured this psychology for many years until I realized one day after years of unhappiness and emptiness that I was living for nothing. Intellectual pursuits had crowded out my spirituality and inner being; thus, I believed in nothing. Unpleasant relationships in my life had destroyed much of my faith in people; thus, I believed in no one. And total disrespect and low regard for myself had diminished my self-esteem; thus, I did not believe in myself.

Aside from family, there was no inspiration in life, no fulfillment. I was not living, as Oscar Wilde would put it, but merely existing. I was, as Henry David Thoreau would describe, living in quiet desperation.

Yet, in a brief, enlightening period of my life dappled with a random pattern of minor epiphanies, I was eventually struck at once with a moment of clarity that revealed to me how wrong I had been. My reality had been so terribly distorted that I could not see the excitement and bounty that life offers.

And let me be clear: “Epiphany” is a loaded word. Epiphanies are major events in people’s lives that cause irrevocable changes. They are so significant that, really, there is usually no more than one in a person’s life, if any.

How many times do you or your friends talk about the great epiphanies you’ve experienced in life? Have you ever been at cocktail party talking to a friend about what you had for dinner, the movie you saw last night, and, oh, the major epiphany that struck you down, raised you up and changed your life, and would you please pass the olives?

True, we often overstate the word, just like one might overstate by saying, “Oh, I could just kill you,” or “I am so in love with Nutella.”

We might use the word after switching from Coke to Pepsi by describing the experience as an “epiphany,” but rarely if ever do we describe to our friends, family and acquaintances such “Road to Damascus” life changing epiphanies.

So I am not intentionally trivializing the word by describing a series of meaningful events in my life as “minor epiphanies.” Each of these occasions were in and of themselves life-altering moments, but it took the whole collection of them to culminate into my transformation (another loaded word, but I am becoming weary parsing my rhetoric). So, yeah, they were epiphanies.

I left agnosticism for faith. I learned that happiness is a choice. I learned that anything is possible. I learned to dream the Big Things. I learned to do Big Things. Etc., etc. It all happened gradually, but it happened.

Almost as with a brand new pair of eyes, the world appeared to me as a new frontier. This slow learning process took quite some time. It did not occur overnight, but what was important to me was that the process led me to one conclusion: Life is beautiful, and you can make into whatever you want.