What is the greatest epiphany you have ever had?

I laughed – at Carl Sagan’s restrained laugh at “and she sold drugs”. Not exactly an epiphany but a little irony following on from the other Cosmos clip.

I laughed at how much smarter I am than some of my Brother In Laws family members by marriage . They went to Harvard and they have less common sense than many ten year olds. They are not hard workers or very knowledge about most things. They have strong opinions and few facts to support them. The smartest people are the ones who achieve success through hard work.
LOL that is why they all marry people who achieve success on their own.
I realized years ago how much more intelligent I am than them.
It was an epiphany because as a Kid we are taught to do well so we attend a Ivy league college. Ha Ha. This is what they produce.

This isn’t a great epiphany, in fact it’s the same one we all have in our late teen early twenties. But I remember the exact moment that I had it. It was when I realized that everything wasn’t all about me (maybe most people have it younger and I was just a late comer? I don’t know). I was going to a New Years party a friend was having and I got lost. I stopped at a pay phone to call for directions (pay phone shows how long ago it was) and when he gave me directions instead of offering to come get me, I realized that it was his party and it really didn’t matter if I was there or not. Now it seems quite odd to me how much of an impact it had on me. I remember just sitting in my car thinking “wow”. And I’ve never been a self-centered person.

Late one night in high school I was getting ready for bed, and was going to brush my teeth. I went in the bathroom and saw that there was laundry in the sink. I could have moved it to the shower, but I was going to take a shower after I brushed my teeth so that would be inconvenient. I couldn’t brush my teeth in the kitchen because the running water would wake up my parents. That was when I realized that I could BRUSH MY TEETH IN THE SHOWER!!!! Huge epiphany. I wrote a paper on it in my writing class.

Mine’s religious. For a long time I was on the fence about whether or not a deity existed. And one night I was thinking about just how big the Universe is – more stars in the galaxy than we could imagine, more galaxies out there than we will ever see, and Earth being an insignificant speck in a place much more grand and empty than we will ever know. And when you combine that with how many religions have ever existed, among all people in all places, who all thought they had the answer about why this Universe came to be. What possible chance could one tiny tribe’s desert god have, among all the others, of explaining the vastness of which we’re less than an eyeblink?

And, assuming that there is a deity somewhere out there, why would they care about us – ants on a crumb! – killing each other over the name we call the deity, the rituals that we’ve decided It wants, and what we do, eat, and say every day and think in our tiny heads? Would it care who we vote for for President, what we do to our neighbor, or if there’s one more or fewer ant born on the crumb? Very little chance that any of it matters, that’s what I think. It became very clear, all at once, that deities are human concepts that try to explain the universe through the lens of their own culture, history, and prevailing ethics and food safety practices. I was no longer on the deity fence.

Please, let’s not turn this into a debate about religion… carry on with the Epiphany stories, mmmkay?

When the feeling and drive left me to make myself important, respected and loved by particular family people. Once I realized I was always going to be whatever they chose me to be, I knew the horse was long dead and I turned my love, time and efforts elsewhere and have had a lot of positive from that decision. It came hard and at a cost, kind of a breadown for a time in my 20’s when I thought I should be strongest and not burdened in any ways.

I was 36 years old and driving home from work when I finally realized why they call it a “69”.

pitifully true

After I moved out of the house and into my first place (room mate, of course, I wasn’t making THAT much money) I’m doin’ my business on the crapper.

Look over, NO toilet paper. Look under the sink, NO toilet paper.

I called my Mom the next day and told her I just now realized that stuff doesn’t just magically appear under the sink!

She had a satisfying laugh.