Idea #3

“An epiphany is a realization; an opening; a portal to the Divine; growing up; a magic moment that impact you and changes you forever and you can remember it as vividly as you experienced it; a moment that changes the lens through which you view your life; our soul scratching around our head and giving us a signal to guide our lives with; a moment of descending light, open knowledge, and choice; a drastic shift in energy and change of perspective that happens in the form of a moment of clarity; something that gives you the strength to take a different direction or move forward and opens up everything; a sense of wonderment; a clarifying direction; that moment where you know your life is never going to be the same.

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We don’t often speak about our epiphanies because they are held so close to our hearts. There simply aren’t opportunities in our society to share such delicate moments, and often we’re embarrassed by them. We don’t always take the time to think about extraordinary moments in our lives and what they really mean. We miss the experience of awe that comes from listening closely to others, to ourselves, and to the signs in the world around us.

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It’s important not only to know other’s stories but also to honor and tell our own. When we do, we often discover things about ourselves or find a deeper meaning behind an epiphany.

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There are so many amazing people around you who help weave the tapestry of your life. Notice them. Observe. Inquire. Act. Wonderful riches are to be mined from everyone around us, from those we meet in random everyday encounters to the people closest to us. So many of the people who have helped me throughout my life turned out to have riveting and important stories to share with me. Because I had never asked, I had no idea about their epiphanies. I had known them for years, but what they shared with me has given me greater insight into them and into my own life.

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People will share their stories generously if they know that their experiences are respected and needed. Many people said they wanted to ask their parents or grandparents about their epiphanies, but couldn’t anymore. So do it. Share your epiphanies and ask the people in your life about theirs”.

Elise Ballard "Epiphany" 

Idea #2

“We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we with to live under.

The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other word, for the look of the public. That is the case with the German singer, the American actress, and even the tall, stopped editor with the big chin. He was accustomed to his readers, and when one day the Russians banned his newspaper, he had the feeling that the atmosphere was suddenly a hundred times thinner. Nothing could replace the look of unknown eyes. He thought he would suffocate. Then one day he realized that he was constantly being followed bugged, and surreptitiously photographed in the street. Suddenly he had anonymous eyes on him and he could breathe again! He began making theatrical speeches to the microphones in his wall.

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. They are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. This happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. People in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need.

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers. Franz, for example. He traveled to the borders of Cambodia only for Sabina. As the bus bumped along the Thai road, he could feel her eyes fixed on him in a long stare.”

Milan Kundera “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” 

Idea #1

“Long before we’ve had chance to become truly familiar with our loved one, we may be filled with the curious sense that we know them already. It can seem as though we’ve met them somewhere before, in a previous life perhaps, or in our dream. In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes accounts for this feeling of familiarity by claiming that the loved one was our long-lost “other half” to whose body our own had originally been joined. In the beginning, all human beings were hermaphrodites with double back and flanks, four hands and four legs, and two faces turned in opposite directions on the same head. These hermaphrodites were so powerful and their pride so overweening that Zeus was forced to cut them in two, into a male and female half – and from that day, every man and woman has yearned nostalgically but confusedly to rejoin the part from which he or she was severed.”

Alain de Botton “On Love”