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Deepak Chopra
“You have a certain set of relationships and you have a story; but suddenly, something can change and you have a new story. At 32, I was a doctor practicing medicine. I saw how people responded unpredictably to treatment. Two people could have the same illness, see the same doctor and still have different outcomes. One day I had an epiphany that body and mind were one. It was startling because I hadn’t been trained like that. I faced huge opposition from the mainstream. But you don’t have to motivate yourself to follow through on an epiphany; you do it anyway because you’re inspired. Motivation, instead, is a result of wanting to transform. I want to lose weight so I’m going to motivate myself to go to the gym—it doesn’t work! After 15 days the gym gets my membership fee, and I’m not going anymore. But with epiphanies, there’s no going back.”
—Chopra is the author of more than 75 books, including the recent Super Genes.
Alice Waters
“Twenty years ago, I was quoted in a newspaper complaining about the look of a local Berkeley school—the lawn was burnt out, the windows had graffiti on them. Well, the principal called me. I visited the school and we walked around. It was built in 1922 for 500 kids—now there were nearly 1,000. We came upon a large area; all at once, I saw a garden there instead of an abandoned lot. And then there was a little shack in the back where I envisioned an enormous cafeteria, one that could seat every child, where they could eat for free. I’ve always felt that a table can be a place of true equality in America. Everyone sits and eats together. I never thought of the garden as simply providing food for the cafeteria, but instead a place where the children could learn. Of course, my idea eventually grew into the Edible Schoolyard project, which now has reach all around the world. But it all began with that one epiphany.”
—Waters is a chef, restaurateur and creator of the Edible Schoolyard program.
Tony Kushner
“There’s something like a hallelujah imprinted in the word epiphany. The force of these moments is part of the reason we even create a category like epiphany. They chasten you, suggesting that there are levels of meaning and comprehension available that choose human beings rather than the other way around. In 1985, I was living in St. Louis when I heard that a friend in New York had died of AIDS. That night, I went to bed and had a dream of an angel crashing through the ceiling, staring down at my friend in his bed. When I decided to write Angels in America, I knew that image would be a part of the thing. With Lincoln, my epiphany was Spielberg saying, ‘I want you to write me a movie about Lincoln!’ You look for these moments as a writer, when something clicks. You’re always hoping that as you do it, you’re excavating a tunnel that you can go down to get to things you didn’t know before.”
—Kushner is a playwright and screenwriter.
Lisa Randall
“The misleading thing about science is that people have epiphanies, those aha moments, all the time. But then someone says, ‘You’re probably wrong,’ and someone else says, ‘You’re probably right.’ Sometimes you do have big insights, and that’s very exciting, but in research, you must balance these moments with a more sober approach. What are we missing? Why has this not been recognized before? When things come together beautifully, that’s an epiphany. In my house, I might have an aha moment when I realize that the painting I bought matches the color of the wall. You see how things fit together. I think people like the idea of epiphanies because they like the idea of things being simpler than they are, almost magically presented. But most problems, especially in science, are complex, and they require not just one epiphany but many.”
—Randall is a professor of science at Harvard University and author of Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs.
David Gelb
“We build stories around epiphanies. Take Spider-Man. He’s bitten by a radioactive spider around the same time his beloved uncle is killed. His new powers are a call to action, and his narrative builds from there. Epiphanies are the moments that cannot be ignored. If you can ignore it and just move on, it’s not really an epiphany, is it? It boils down to the moment a character realizes what they think they want isn’t what they actually need. Making documentaries, like Chef’s Table and Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we literally ask, ‘What are the most important moments in your life? When did things change?’ We try to find the key moments that led chefs in new directions. Epiphanies in life tend to lead to epiphanies in cooking. The most interesting chefs base their dishes on these transformative periods.”
—Gelb is a film director. The second season of Chef’s Table premieres this month on Netflix.
Elizabeth Gilbert
“Listen, I’m a memoirist. Anyone with 10 bucks can buy a copy of Eat, Pray, Love and read all about my epiphanies. The reason epiphanies feel so surprising is twofold. First, it’s the surprise of seeing a truth revealed. Second, it’s the deep shock of wondering why it took you so long to see it in the first place. It’s something that was there all the while. Sometimes an epiphany can be very beautiful, like when you realize you’re in love with your best friend. Other times it can be incredibly painful. For me, the biggest and most important personal epiphany of my life was that bouncing from man to man was not actually a path to happiness and fulfillment. The emptiness I was trying to fill was not going to be filled by leaping into the arms and bed of somebody else. But an epiphany is not an obligation. It’s an invitation. What you do with that invitation is up to you.”
—Gilbert is a writer. She is the author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic.
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