I had heard the word epiphany before but it wasn’t until I was reading a James Joyce passage that I internalized the meaning of the word. The words as if spoken from a boy that was my age paralleled my own internal thoughts about want and lust. Joyce’s writings, steeped in oral tradition, were able to transcend the written word and become spoken word and the spoken words related to my own emotional state.
Once you internalize the meaning of epiphany you can begin to recognize when they happen and sometimes why. There was a girl on the beach in Maine that threw mud at me for no reason, that was the moment that Joyce wrote about when writing about his own life, real or imagined, so many years ago. A connection was born between the past and present and those seeking knowledge and those providing wisdom or looking to inspire.