Epiphany is something I have written about quite a lot - that moment of sudden realisation that makes everything clear to you. I've written about it in the context of problems we try to solve and then almost give up only to find that moment occur that makes us realise the solution.
There is another epiphany though that I haven't written about and that's the type that causes you to re-evaluate your life. By that I don't mean where you are right now, I mean your past and what you have done. Epiphany in this context can completely rewrite our past, when we suddenly realise things we were oblivious to before. These moment of epiphany can almost rewrite history and it can make you very paranoid.
I've had a moment of epiphany that's made me re-evaluate my life during high school and college. There are seminal events in my life I now have to re-evaluate and think about from an entirely new perspective and that perspective is considerably more negative than I had already - which for me is quite disturbing because my perspective was already quite negative to begin with.
Seeing things from your own point of view you can only assess how those events affected you directly and how they made you feel. When you look at them from another point of view though, especially those events involving other people you have to re-evaluate how those events affected them too, and most importantly the interaction that occurred and the intended consequences of each side.
I realise I am being cryptic so I'll give you a fictional example. Imagine you and another person out hunting and they missed their shot narrowly missing you. Heated words would exchange more than likely and apologies exchanged. You would dismiss that event as being an accident and the other person being careless. You would be upset and angry. Now imagine a few years pass and you find out that they didn't like you as a friend as much as you had thought. Consider then how you would look back on that event and wonder - was that shot intentional? Did they try to kill you?
If you follow the example above then you will know where I am coming from, the events of our past and how they affected us, and what we thought of those events can be completely rewritten when we are given another point of view - finding out they didn't like you makes you re-evaluate the event and consider the possibility that it wasn't an accident that they almost hit you, but rather it becomes an accident that they missed you.
This fundamental change is something only epiphany can cause, paranoia can make us think of ulterior motives, but only epiphany can make us re-evaluate the event in context, because epiphany does not take just that event into account but every other linked event and every other memory that could be drawn in to the equation - like a brainstorming session where all the different ideas are pooled together and pieced together like a jigsaw.
I said I've had a moment of epiphany and it has indeed made me re-evaluate quite a significant portion of my life. If proves to be true then it turns me into something I never wanted to be.
I feel like my soul has been ripped from my body right now. I feel like my conscience transcends space and time and that I have been disconnected. I have had out of body experiences before but this is quite different. I can see more than I ever wanted to see and I am not sure I am comfortable with it.
