I have them all the time, but can only remember one, from my childhood.
I was trying to learn how to play the guitar. I was making progress, but it was an uphill climb. Then one day, at camp, away from my guitar, we were listening to the radio while doing crafts. The melody in one song went from one note to another, and I realized that I knew that interval. I didn’t know what it was called, but I knew how many frets it was. Then I realized that I recognized a few other intervals, and it dawned on my that intervals could be heard. Playing by ear was more than a matter of hit or miss, and I was growing that ability.
Small epiphanies here. Once I was arguing with a roomate when his friend piped in, “James, stop baiting him.” I suddenly realized not only that I was being played like a harp, but that he got off on it. From then on, he never got a rise out of me and I took some satisfaction from his comment about me “not being any fun anymore.”
As an intern, I was super stressed out about screwing up my work. But then, suddenly, it came to me: I was not being graded. If the boss didn’t like what I wrote, he’d give it back with suggestions and I could fix it with no foul. That knowledge has served me well since then.
Lastly, I had an epiphany while reading about code breaking. I suddenly got it when I read that if you knew the length of the key N, you could take every Nth letter and statistically analyze it like a simple substitution code.
when the lecturer, who was a bit of a showman, eventually demonstrated that e^(i pi) = -1. I momentarily had this enormous rush of perception. The whole world seemed laid bare to me. It didn’t last of course, because I’m not great at the whole maths thing, but it was at least a glimpse of the towers of thought that other people seem to inhabit easily, and
on E, in a huge marquee, Leftfield playing, I just became music, primal, sweaty and, in the old sense, awesome, and
an (ex) long-term girlfriend. I woke up early one morning shortly after we had got together and watched a little bubble continually form and burst at the side of her mouth as she slept. If I were offered by a passing Timelord the chance to relive ten minutes of my life, this would be the pick.
I have them all the time, too. Mostly of the emotional variety, pertaining to me personally. Most of my waking time is spent mulling on things, and trying to figure things out. So from a couple of times a week to a couple of times a day, I have a-ha moments and say to myself, “Oh, yeah! Duh!” I keep thinking that after so much of this figuring-stuff-out, I’ll have it all done and know everything. But then new things come along to figure out, and it never ends.
I wonder if anyone can Identify this: In have dreams where I go from one extreme to the other with understanding…
Sometimes I have dreams where I feel like I’ve lost my mind and I can’t comprehend anything, my ability to comprehend at all is not working properly, and it can be really quite worrying.
Other times The Seemingly opposite happens, I have an epiphany or what feels like one about consciousness or something similar, It makes perfeft sense. almost every time I know I’m dreaming and I say to myself I hope I can remember this for when I wake up.
I was sitting in church (when I was about 12) listening to a sermon or lesson or something and suddenly had an epiphany, “Wow, I believe this stuff,” which was the first time I ever realized that there was the possibility to believe or not believe what was being taught to me in church. It was probably not the epiphany the church was hoping for, since this moment led to a whole bunch of questioning and, eventually, a loss of belief for me. But it was quite the revelation!
This reminds me of how when I was a kid it was the norm to assume God existed. I now see that I had been brainwashed because I had been led to believe in something before being old enough to make my own mind up.
It’s one of the worst things about religion, It is tantemount to child abuse.
I have had them, but for the life of me I can’t recall even one for now.
They tend to be on the simple side like the Arby’s example. Then again, sometimes I can be thinking about people in my life and suddenly some pieces of the puzzle just seem to come together and I understand their POV or whatever.
I could use one now. Too bad you can’t have them made to order…
I don’t know that I’ve ever had any "earth-shattering epiphanies, but I would say that I will have things just “click” on occasion. Although, typically when that happens I just feel dumb.
For instance, the other day I was thinking about radians. It wasn’t until then, years after I first learned the concept, that the entire idea clicked. 2pi radians. The circumference is 2pi*radius and the name radian. Took almost 10 years for all that to click into place, but it did!
Those sorts of things aren’t uncommon for me, although I usually feel like a dunce afterward.
