Epiphany (Part 1)

e•piph•a•ny (noun)

[Middle English : from Greek epiphainein ‘reveal.’ The sense relating to the Christian festival is via Old French epiphanie and ecclesiastical Latin epiphania.]

1) a moment of sudden revelation or insight brought about a usually ordinary circumstances warranting a dramatic change in an individual's behaviour

2) a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being

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This is one of my favorite words, but it is difficult to explain why (which is one of the reasons I love it).

Epiphanies can be amazing, elating experiences or harsh, terrible moments causing immense despair. An epiphany is that moment when you realize that something important was not as you once thought it was. 

It's when life pops out from a broom closet like Ashton Kutcher, exclaiming, "You've been Punk'd! Life's not what you thought it was and now all your perceptions are in question!"

I actually really don't like this guy.

But I believe that epiphanies are tremendous experiences that open our eyes to things we had never seen or realities that we had never thought about before.

One example is how the other day I was watching a movie with some guys in the dorm. It was really well done and very trippy, but for all intents and purposes, I will call this movie The Prestige so I won't ruin the ending for you.

 

                                Such a good movie!

So after we had finished watching the movie, we were very confused and disoriented by the last scene. 

Later on, I started talking to a guy about it and he was all like, "Man I love Inception! Especially the ending!" And I was like "What? Why would you like an ending that was so ambiguous and confusing?"

He responded by explaining how the first time he saw it, he viewed it from a postmodernist standpoint, so the ambiguity only asserted the ideals of rejecting absolute or capital T truth.

This blew my mind more than the movie did. This was my epiphany, not only to understanding whatever movie it was we watched, but having a much better understanding of postmodernism as well. Suddenly I had a much clearer view of how postmodernism has shaped so much of fiction, art, and even the way we think in today's world. I could go on and on about po-mo, but then I would never get off my computer.

Because of this realization, I am now enjoying my 20th century poetry class so much more! I've rekindled my love of Eliot and Frost and have grown back in love with fragmentation and stream-of-consciousness. 

All that aside, this didn't fulfill the true definition of an epiphany because it changed very little in the way I act and behave. It was a relatively small realization, but this is why I love epiphanies so much, because there are so many different ways in which they can occur. Once we acknowledge their importance, we start to notice just how often they can occur. If we allow our minds to be opened, we can experience enough epiphanies that, if all epiphanies were chromosomes, we would have a ploidy in no time!

The other day I did have a real life-changing epiphany, but I will save that for the next post which, to make up for my missing last week, will be posted on Thursday. I still want to talk about James Joyce and the second part of the definition above. But I will still have another word for Thursday too, Tim!

One last thing,

I'm so glad to hear you're exam went well and I'm even more stoked to hear how awesome your classes are! I'll keep praying for you and your semester though! 

I'm finally getting into the groove out here; I finished a group project, 5 page paper, and am currently pretending to work on another group paper. Shhhh, I'm sneaking!

I love my Political Science Class, my Classical Literature class and mi profesora de la clase de español es muy adorable. I've also started running my Youth program and have a great team of people with me! The building we're using is being renovated right now, so we won't be able to actually start until next week. 

My dorm is full of some of the most amazing guys ever! Some of the guys started receiving mysterious messages from a secret admirer posted on their door, so I've been following their back-and-forth letters daily. Seeing as I don't have the means and time to spare to watch a lot of TV, this has been my daily entertainment (aside from The Thread of course!)

OK, have a great Wednesday and I'll post real soon!

Clayton™