My friend is having an Epiphany Eve party tonight. If my dictionary is not mistaken an epiphany is "the sudden realisation or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something".
It's a term "used in either a philosophical or literal sense to signify that the claimant has found the last piece of the puzzle and now sees the whole picture or has new information or experience, often insignificant by itself, that illuminates a deeper or numinous foundational frame of reference". No, I don't know what numinous means either. Oh hang on, I do. It's a Latin term coined by German theologian Rudolf Otto to describe that which is wholly other. It leads to a belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent. Don't say you don't learn anything reading this column.
My friend had an epiphany before organising this party. He hasn't wanted to host any gatherings lately because his house isn't quite as perfect as he'd like. His epiphany was around the idea that nothing will ever be perfect and he can't stop living his life waiting for perfection, so Epiphany Eve seemed a perfect day to celebrate this revelation. Also, it's the last day you can legitimately have the decorations up so his home will look festively fabulous.
I have suggested to my friend that he asks all his guests to reveal some of their own personal epiphanies at the party. There has been a mixed response. It turns out that standing up in front of people spouting epiphanies is not everyone's idea of a good time. So then I had the idea that people could write down their epiphanies and we could put them in a hat and read them out, anonymously. Not sure how that has gone down.
For the past few days, while trying to remember my own epiphanic moments, I've been drawing a complete blank. Would it be bad etiquette to invent an epiphany for an Epiphany Eve party? Probably. Maybe I could steal somebody else's epiphany. That's it. I will plagiarise an epiphany from some great thinker and hope no one notices.
Homer had a great one in The Simpsons movie. Having caused an ecological crisis that is threatening to destroy Springfield, the big man is counselled by a shaman who tries to force an epiphany out of him by getting a load of trees to tear him apart.
"Do whatever you want with me, I don't care about myself any more . . ." Homer says eventually, at which point the shaman appears and encourages Homer to finish the thought. "I don't care about myself any more," Homer says, "Because other people are just as important as me. In order to save myself, I have to save Springfield!" Other people are just as important as me. Hmmm. As epiphanies go, it's not really that impressive, but these are desperate times and I can always use it as a fall back.
Darwin. There was a man who knew his way around an epiphany, but if I stand up at the party and start going on about "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" somebody might twig. I could steal from The Incredible Shrinking Man - that bit at the end where he is tiny and down in the basement fending off insects and he has this epiphany about the tiniest things being connected to the biggest things, like a big mixing bowl of connectedness. Yes. I like it. I'll leave out the shrinking bit and say how it all came to me when I was meditating in a field in India, looking at ants crawling around my bare feet: "I just looked down at these tiny creatures and thought wow, the smallest ant and the biggest tidal wave, are like, just so connected, and stuff."
Still, I am bit disappointed that after all the retreats I've been on and all the self-help books I've read, I have to steal an epiphany from The Incredible Shrinking Man. Perhaps I shouldn't think too much about it. Maybe this over-analysis is stopping my real epiphanies coming through, causing a blockage on the epiphany hotline, so to speak. All my epiphanies sound trite. Don't judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Don't take things personally. A watched kettle never boils - which is actually not true because I've tried and it will still boil, it just seems to take longer.
Maybe I should just stand up at the party and say whatever comes to mind, trust my inner epiphany creator. And if that doesn't work, I'll just talk about how I was in the bath one night and came up with an idea of how to estimate the volume of a given mass that explained not only the buoyancy of ships and other vessels in water, but also the rise of a balloon in the air and the apparent loss of weight of objects underwater. Eureka. u