Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Le canapé de l’amour, 2022
Our reader writes:
Hi Bear,
I am currently in Tokyo and I find myself stopping at a lot of vintage stores as I come across them, not looking for anything in particular, except for the off chance that something on the racks will resonate deeply with me. It’s that headspace where these questions are coming from.
I find myself constantly looking for epiphanies - the moment of clarity they bring, the way perspective shifts with a deeper understanding, the whole sense of confluence and serendipity. But it seems problematic too. I do not have a reliable way to arrive at an epiphany - it all feels slot machine-y. Will it appear through the next book, the next tweet, the next trip, etc. Also, I find the nature of epiphanies is that they sort of appear - something that you have to see before you can define rather than something you can simply ask for like a particular ingredient at the supermarket, but maybe this is just intellectual laziness on my part. I guess my questions are:
- How can I more reliably arrive at epiphanies instead of feeling like it’s a game of chance? Sometimes it feels like a lot time/energy spent chasing an outcome that may never materialize at the expense of things I know will have a particular outcome.
- A lot of advice I have read and subscribe to seem to come down to having a clear sense of things - identity, priorities, desires - and clear understanding of why we want them. Does the same apply for epiphanies - can we reflect, research, introspect to be clear about what we are looking for b for going out to look for it, or is this something that here we simply need to be sensitive, observant, and without preconceived notions to be able to notice when one crosses our path?
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