A moment of clarity

Everybody in this world has these moments of clarity when all the tumblers fall into place and we unlock an answer so accurate, it's weight hits us with the force of the sky falling on our heads.

I first recognized the moment of clarity when I read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The starting of one of the books had this paragraph.

"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever."

It was this paragraph that got me thinking - Don't we all have that kind of feeling once in a while? An epiphany, a disclosure or an revelation that sudden creates a sudden expansion of all mental functions.

Many people say that they've never had this sort of thing. Truth is they have experienced it but cannot identify it. It's treated with a glove of jovial contempt in general, denied as being 'too poetic' or 'useless', but these moments are what makes life worth living.

Its funny but I find myself addicted to these moments of clarity. Funny because you cannot predict them or have them on command. Yet watching a good movie, reading a good book or just listening to music can sometimes give me a clear thought.

Hitchhiker's was one thing that did that for me repeatedly. As were the works of the late Spike Milligan. I've even had one playing Street Fighter. I wont list them but they were hilarious or revealing in their own right.

I've had moments of clarity about people. Whether it be by talking to them or interpreted through their actions. The thing is you should never discount such a moment because invariably it releases you to a sense of wondrous disbelief - "Why didn't I think of that before?"

So the next time you have something like that, savour it. These moments are few and far between. To end, I will illustrate this with a popular Zen saying.

"When you are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are not enough. When you have realized understanding, even one word is too much."