The Holy Sh*t Moment: How lasting change can happen in an instant. James Fell

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СКАЧАТЬ ROLE OF EPIPHANY

       A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

      —OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

      My grandmother was an evil and bugshit bonkers hell-beast of a woman who hated everyone and everything. A while back, we were having a family get-together, and my sister asked which kid had possession of grandma’s engagement ring.

      “Isn’t that one of her Horcruxes?” my son said.

      The joke slayed; 10 points to Gryffindor.

      Speaking of crazy grandmothers and things that slay, there was blood everywhere, and I was screaming. The blood was pouring out of my left knee. Childhood trauma provides vivid recollection despite more than four decades having past.

      We were visiting my grandmother in Victoria. A friend named Brent was chasing me through the house in a game of tag, and the sliding glass door that led to the back deck was sparkling clean.

      In other words, I thought it was open. I was only five.

      Fortunately, I did not go through the glass. I hit it with my knee and it shattered, then I fell backward, away from the shards. Blood poured forth from my knee as screams ripped from my throat in equal measure. This, followed by Uncle Jim driving me to the hospital through the rolling coastal hills at a speed that punished the suspension of the pre-1970s-model four-door car while my mother had a minor meltdown in the back seat as she attempted to hold my knee together with six squares of toilet paper.

      I still hadn’t stopped screaming. I remember the screaming, not the pain.

      Thirty stitches plus an annoyed doctor and nurse later, we went back to Grandma’s house, and she proceeded to chew me out about her shattered door.

      That was my first inkling she wasn’t such a nice person.

      I achieved a fuller realization she was “cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” a few years after destroying her window. My parents had split, and we had no choice but to live with her for six painful months. I was getting an apple and she told me to give her half. I got a knife and cut, and being a young lad, it was a haphazard job. I was left with one piece substantially larger than the other.

      It seemed wise to give my grandmother the larger half, so I did. Then she proceeded to berate me for being a “greedy little bugger.” She told me I should have given her the bigger half. I was looking at my half, which was about one-third of an apple, then looked at her two-thirds of an apple and said to myself You really are a nutbag.

      I won’t repeat any of the racist slurs she often spewed.

      For three decades, I watched my grandmother torment my mother. My mother told me horror stories about her childhood, and I believe them. Mom had one of the shittiest, most abusive childhoods you can imagine. So, yes, she’s a little neurotic as an adult.

      But she is not at all abusive, quite the opposite.

      I have never wanted for love. Mom showered my sister and me with love to the point it was almost annoying. “Yeah, I get it, Mom. You love me, but now you’re embarrassing me.” I always knew from my earliest days that, no matter what, Mom had my back.

      And yet, when she became pregnant for the first time with my older sister, there was panic. My mom dreaded she would be like her own mother and perpetuate a cycle of abuse. She spoke of this to her doctor, who gave her some simple yet poignant advice: “The suffering you’ve endured can be undone by loving your children with all your heart. Think of what your own mother would have done, and do the opposite.”

      The advice sounded good but did not resonate. The fear remained.

      Later, at home, she felt my sister kick. My mother told me of feeling the growing child inside her. She believed the kick was a message saying, I am here, and I need you. Even though my sister was not yet born, my mother realized in that instant she loved her in a way she had never loved another person before.

      Her heart soared.

      In a moment, she knew she would never be like her own mother. Down to her core, she was certain she would be the most loving and caring mom she could be. And she has been.

      I’m not crying. You’re crying. Shut up.

      Such a sensation, in which you achieve total clarity of purpose in an instant, qualifies for the word “epiphany.”

      No matter which way epiphany manifests, you must listen. It’s the path to a better life.

      Speaking of a better life, my mom didn’t let her upbringing hold her back. She earned her corner office in a male-dominated industry, becoming a business juggernaut celebrated in the community. What’s more, she took a near-impossible high road with her own mother, continuing to look after her rather than write her off. She even forked out for a nice nursing home when the old bat lost the last of her marbles.

      The lesson is this: The circumstances of the first part of your life don’t have to define the second part. No matter what transpired yesterday or the days preceding it, this does not determine what happens on neither this day nor the days yet to come.

      No one makes it through life without scars. Some are visible, like the one on my knee; others reside below the surface. Sometimes change happens fast via epiphany. Sometimes it takes years and baby steps. Change is inevitable, but you’re the one who influences the direction such change will take.

      If you’re tired of the path you’re on, you can switch to a new one. They’re your feet, and you have the freedom to place them where you choose. A quantum leap of inspiration to change your path does not mean you lack liberty. Just because your new way forward has become irresistible does not mean you have sacrificed self-determination. Rather, your heart and mind being united in what feels right is what gives epiphany its power to push you.

      When you feel such power, it means you are about to fulfill your destiny.

       Off the Quantum Deep End

      The word “quantum” is being increasingly used in health circles to the point that it is almost considered to be pseudoscience.

      What I am about to write is not pseudoscience. It’s Einsteinian science. And other kinds of real science. Quantum has been a real science thing for a long time and it’s still a real science thing.

      Ironically, I chose a science-fiction author to explain it to me.

       Digital Decision-Making

      The first time I met Rob Sawyer, I was worried he was about to die. Being we were not yet friends and that I am sometimes selfish, my initial concern was how this affected me.

      Rob is a Hugo Award–winning science-fiction author. Early in 2005, I registered for a weeklong science-fiction writer’s workshop at the Banff Center in the Rocky Mountains, to be led by Rob and taking place in September of that year. I’d read Rob’s work and seen his photo on book jackets, and when I met him at a book signing four months prior to the workshop, he looked nothing like I expected.

      He’d lost a lot of weight. So much so I was concerned he had a terminal disease. My baser self worried that if he died, there would be no workshop.

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