Lately I’ve been thinking about quite a few things, especially regarding my career, and I realized that I’m not the sort of person to have epiphanies.  I’m the sort of person who makes decisions gradually, who ponders situations for weeks and then eventually makes a choice.  And because I make my decisions so gradually, my realizations come gradually as well, in pockets of little revelations one after another. 

I have also realized that a lot of the decisions I’ve made in the past have been made out of fear – fear of failure, fear of missing an opportunity, fear of giving up what I already had for the sake of pursuing something else.   To use a Yu-Gi-Oh term (please forgive me for that, but my friends used to play it!), I play with a defensive deck.  I hold my cards close and lay out a protection strategy – I wall myself in and hope that my defenses will hold. 

All of this has led to a personal realization that’s as close to an epiphany as a non-epiphanous (is that a word?) person can come – the realization that if I ever want to achieve my dreams, my goals, I have to cast aside my protective gates and fences and barriers and actively pursue what I want.  If I ever want to be successful in my career, I have to stop waiting for opportunities to fall into my lap.  I have to be active.  I have to take risks.  I have to stop being afraid of failure and go after my goals, for better or for worse, because if I don’t, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have happened if I did. 

This has been a life-altering sort of realization for me, though I understand I’m speaking in generalities. 

However, it got me to thinking about the concept of epiphanies in general.  What exactly is an epiphany, and what makes them so – well – epiphanous?

I’ve always thought that epiphanies were these magical, light-bulb-over-the-head, I-can’t-believe-I-never-thought-of-this-before moments.   But now I’m wondering, what differentiates a sudden, in-the-moment realization from a gradual thought process culminating in a powerful revelation?  Is one an epiphany, and the other isn’t?  That hardly seems fair to people like me, whose minds are constantly going, and who feel as though they’ve never achieved life-altering epiphanies because they make all their decisions so carefully. 

So I looked up the word “epiphany”.  According to Dictionary.com, “epiphany” has four separate meanings:

1.       A Christian festival commemorating the appearance of Christ to the Gentiles

2.       An appearance or manifestation, esp. of Deity

3.       A sudden, intuitive perception or insight into something, usually initiated by a commonplace experience

4.       A literary work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight

The basic idea running through all four of these definitions is that of a revelation – a sudden appearance of something that simply wasn’t there before, be that insight, perception, or even deity. 

 Now, I’m not sure why I always thought that epiphanies had to appear out of nowhere – I suppose the definition of them as “sudden” accounts for that – but it occurs to me now that epiphanies might just as well have been years in the making.  After all, when Christ appeared to the Gentiles, it seemed sudden to them, perhaps, but it had been planned long before by Christ Himself. 

 So then, is the key to an epiphany simply that the recipient is taken by surprise?  Does an epiphany require that insight or perception simply fall into a person’s lap or hit them squarely in the forehead?

 If so, then I have had the most interesting epiphany of all – the epiphany to no longer wait around for epiphanies.  I have had the realization that I need to stop waiting around for doors to be opened or the future to unfold, and become an active pursuer of my goals and dreams.   I have realized that I need to be the active player in my own life, because if I want to help people, or write a novel, or work with dolphins, or do something “meaningful” with my life – if I want to do that – then I need to do that.  No one else is going to do it for me, and certainly no one is going to stop the clock on my life so I can catch up on all the things I always meant to do.  I’ve been waiting for the perfect opportunity, the right time to do things, only to realize that the right time is now, and it always has been. 

Epiphany or not, I’m not playing with a defensive deck anymore – after all, I sold my Yu-Gi-Oh cards a long time ago.

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