One of my favorite things about myself is that I’m very prone to epiphanies. In a moment—and I’ll always remember that moment, when and where it happened—I’ll be struck so hard by an idea or a realization that my whole life changes.
I was talking to my husband Jamie at the corner of 69th Street and Third Avenue when I thought, “I could write a biography of Winston Churchill that showed that there are many ways to view him, very different but all accurate.”
I was in a bus near the intersection of 79th Street and Park Avenue when I thought, “I should do a happiness project.”
I was sitting at my desk, right where I’m sitting now, reviewing my notes on habits and thinking back on a conversation with a friend. She’d said, “When I was in high school, I was on the track team, and I never missed track practice. Why can’t I go running now?” Suddenly, it was as if the word EXPECTATION exploded out of the notepad in front of me, and I realized that “expectation” was the key idea I’d been searching for. That epiphany was the key to my personality framework, the Four Tendencies.
Because I love experiencing epiphanies myself, I love reading about other people’s epiphanies.
One of the most intriguing examples comes from prominent British art historian, museum director, and broadcast Kenneth Clark. You may remember him from the BBC television series Civilisation. In the second volume of his autobiography, The Other Half: A Self-Portrait, he describes his experience:
I lived in solitude, surrounded by books on the history of religion, which have always been my favourite reading. This may help to account for a curious episode that took place on one of my stays in the villino. I had a religious experience. It took place in the Church of San Lorenzo, but did not seem to be connected with the harmonious beauty of the architecture. I can only say that for a few minutes my whole being was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy, far more intense than anything I had known before. This state of mind lasted for several months, and, wonderful though it was, it posed an awkward problem in terms of action. My life was far from blameless: I would have to reform. My family would think I was going mad, and perhaps after all, it was a delusion, for I was in every way unworthy of such a flood of grace. Gradually the effect wore off, and I made no effort to retain it. I think I was right; I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course. But that I had “felt the finger of God” I am quite sure, and, although the memory of this experienced has faded, it still helps me to understand the joys of the saints.
This epiphany is particularly interesting to me, because it gave him a great new understanding of the world, but he chose not to allow it to change his life. You rarely hear about circumstances like that. I wonder if Kenneth Clark ever wondered what his life would have been like if he had decided to change course.
If you want to take my Four Tendencies personality framework, you can take it here.