How To Manufacture An Epiphany
I went on holiday (holiday? not quite holy days for me, although ‘twas for some of thee; vacation? no, not quite vacare, as the Latins first put it, since I was not so much unoccupied; perhaps sojourn fits best, per my journeys befit my journalistic pursuits).
I jetted off to Athens earlier this month, then metro’d, trained, vanned and ferried my way around the mainland and off to the Cyclades to celebrate my birthday. Even more than that, I realized how long it has been since I last wrote a Piffany, and hoped my travels might inspire me anew. Oh, poor me! Poor me! Pour me another drink. Actually, no mas, por favor. ευχαριστώ! Pour some of this sugar on me, instead, as we all said goodbye to summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-r-a-m-a-s!
OK. Where was I? Where am I? Does it matter?
How to manufacture an epiphany. Ah, that’s it. Here we are. Hold that thought while I Google it for you.
A decade ago, Steve Blank, writing in The Atlantic, suggested the following:
“Here's the part that's counterintuitive - on a regular basis make time to take an hour, or even a day to do something completely different. Go for a hike or a drive. Walk around the city. Don't distract yourself with something that makes you focus (the movies, TV, email or the net.) Instead, shut it all down and do something that's relaxing and gives the problem solving part of your brain a rest - let the pattern recognition side take over.”
So I’m on the right track already? Huzzah!
In Fast Company in 2019 (link broken, but I found it via the Wayback Machine), Erik Dane, who taught then at the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, preached mindfulness: “Tune into events that befall you instead of blocking them. We live on our phones and literally screen out the world. We’re not fully cognitive and are on autopilot these days. It makes me wonder if we’re inadvertently missing events that could prompt epiphanies.”
Wait a second. How come the top Google searches from media all link back to business folk doing business stuff? I didn’t come here for work! I wanted to take a break from work so I could land upon some big ideas. What’s the big idea here?!?
As a journalist who has focused for the past (ahem) 15 years primarily on comedy, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing with my own eyes some of the oldest live venues in the world, ancient amphitheaters scattered around Greece. From the footsteps of the Acropolis in Athens, to Epidaurus, to Milos (pictured above). I wanted to picture myself in the crowd, or onstage, even, then or now.
The ἀμφιθέατρον (amphitheatron) in Milos, located below Trypiti but above the tiny seaside village of Klima, with views facing west to the Aegean Sea, once entertained crowds upward of 7,000. The recently refurbished space seats 700. It dates back to perhaps the Hellenic period, sometime between the reigns of outsiders Alexander the Great and later Augustus of Rome, destroyed when and by whom? All we know is that a traveling Jesuit monk discovered the ruins in 1735, and excavations began around 1816 by the Bavarians, and this is where they found the Venus de Milo in 1820, which soon thereafter landed in the Louvre in Paris. A replica of the statute exists in Milos instead.
Where am I going with all of this?
Do I find myself wanting to move to Greece? Absolutely. Do I need to do that right this second? Absolutely not.
Thank the TikTok algorithm for sending this video into my feed this week:
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While the so-called Seven Wonders of the Ancient World may be mostly lost to wars and despots and those who do not appreciate wonders, the happy fact remains: There are at least 7 billion wonders all around us right now. We just have to uncover them right where we are.
If I want to be extra sentimental about this, I can remind myself and you of this fortune cookie I received when I was 16, which inspired my first chapel sermon in prep school, which is where I heard my first intentional laughs from an audience, where I realized my potential as a writer and as a communicator. The site of my very first epiphany.
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