Hit The Ground Running

A couple of weeks ago (maybe a week even as I have no sense of time), I was vacationing with my family and some friends on the gulf coast. Our condo (I hate the sound of that word, it's just so ugly) faced a beautiful view of the water, and I found myself two feet away from a dolphin who seemed to be content making a group of people follow him as he swam from one side of the sound to the other. The dolphin was amazing sight to see but I feel like he dragged me out of the condo so I could see how amazing the sunset was as it spread so many subtle hues over the vast body of water before me. It was a life-affirming moment for me, the kind of moment where the big questions (you know, like "Why are we here? What should I do with my life? Why do they call it the funny bone?") didn't really matter. What mattered was that I was there, experiencing something so beautiful. Later, it occurred to me that I had a mini-epiphany. I wouldn't call it a full-on epiphany, so mini-epiphany works. That's when I began to realize that epiphanies don't actually work like they do in books and cinema (big surprise, right?). My conjecture is that there never is one big epiphany but just many little epiphanies that may or may not even be recognized as anything significant that are gathered through life. Slowly but surely, these puzzle pieces form a picture until there's only one piece missing. That final piece is the one that is usually recognized as the epiphany, but really it just the final step in a arduous and slow process. The problem is, it's much more convient to assume that it hit all at once and that event will forever be remembered as the epiphany. But what about the other pieces which were just as important in forming the picture but just had the misfortune of not being the final piece acquired? They are lost forever, cast in the shadow of that final piece, when they very well could have been more helpful than what came later. My fear of losing these other pieces is what has spurred me to start this diary/journal/place where I put down my thoughts and the reason you're reading this entry right now. And now that my intentions have been exposed, I shall retire until the next entry, leaving with a challenge to count how many times I said epiphany.