Go Into The Light ~ Early Morning Thoughts

When people aren't engaging my interest, I get some of my best thinking done on the bus (also in the shower, but that's for a later post). I'm not sure why, but while traveling along the streets and areas I know quite well, I can let my mind run down all sorts of interesting "pig" trails and byways. Today I was looking back over events of the last four weeks, the last week and the last 24 hours. It was then I realized that I was really looking at what I wanted to call "defining moments."

Sometimes the phrase is used politically or socially, but I realized I was looking at it from a very personal point of view. Some of the moments have passed, but I also realized I was going to be dealing with defining moments yet to come. This allowed my mind to move toward another term that can be part of defining moments: epiphany.

Epiphany (feeling), a realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something or someone
or to be more dictionary about it ~
e·piph·a·ny ĭ-pĭf'ə-nē)n.
1. Epiphany

3. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
4. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization:

"I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself"
--Frank Maier

Creativity is an instant -- a moment when our lives are defined. It's the moment we touch each other's lives. And our response to that tiny passing event doesn't change just us. It changes the world we live in at the same time.
--John Lienhard
The Engines of Our Ingenuity

If only there were a longer time between epiphany and epitaph
--David Glaser

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
-- John Milton

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.
--Charles Darwin

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
--Jim Horning

In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
--Theodore Roosevelt

Part of discovering who you are and what you are capable of requires you to reflect upon some of the key moments from your past. We all have experienced "defining moments." Those moments that define who you are and what you stand for. Those moments that help you create clarity about your life purpose and your life values. Sometimes those moments are in response to life's challenges. It's when you rise to the occasion. It's when you become the person you always wanted to be.
--Mark Susnow

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”
--Carl Sagan

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
--Oscar Wilde

See I’m a dreamer, man, and when I was a cook I’d always work with people who weren’t dreamers. Like, I was cooking at this restaurant and I put a hot dog on the grill and my kitchen manager came over, and he said, “Mitch, put the hot dog up here, in the right hand corner of the grill, so in case you get a whole bunch of orders at once you have all this space available.” See that’s how I knew he wasn’t a dreamer, ’cause the day I give up my dreams is the day I have strategic grill locations. A dreamer has a philosophy: the entire grill is hot!
--Mitch Hedberg