I’ve had multiple throughout my life – when I met a transgender person for the first time and began to wonder about gender as a construct, so many things made sense…let’s see…there were others having to do with what I want out of love.
A few actually, but the most important one happened on May 2, 1999, when I woke up and realized, really knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my drinking was killing me. Thankfully, I haven’t had another drink since that day.
We all have, some of mine were realizing I couldn’t stay inside and play videogames if I wanted to meet women, realizing that my personality and values conflict with tying myself down in any type of romantic relationship while I’m young, and realizing I need to stop BSing and do something that will actually benefit me monetarily in the future.
If you can call it that, im not sure its an epiphany if the realization is dictated to you so to speak. but i had a very powerful experience while watching this video when i watched it for the first time.
I read Thoreau’s Walden at the age of 27 and was so moved that I quit my job, gave away everything I owned and lived in the woods for 40 days. That moment was either an epiphany or the start of a nervous breakdown.
When I saw a woman shove a bratty 10-year-old on a New York subway, observed people nodding in agreement and realized I was doing the same, I knew immediately it was time to get the hell out of that city. There have been other epiphanies, but most have resulted in a less immediate dawning of awareness.