Written on 22 February 2019
Occasionally you'll have a friend, or a work colleague, or a casual acquaintance who you are not predisposed to, and you find yourself stuck with them at a party, listening to a story, with no escape.
It's usually quite a dull one, like someone who kept on getting injured for their six-a-side team, or someone who's mother refuses to move into a house with no stairs. Or that things were going slightly poorly at work, usually due to something they were genuinely at fault for, but, of course, they didn't see it that way.
And in that story they'll mention an epiphany. As if it was a higher power who told them to start swimming, or the suggestion that their level of thinking was on such an extraordinary plain that no-one else in history could’ve possibly thought of installing a Stanna stairlift in their mum’s home.
And you just want to shake them. You wonder whether anyone living in a bombed out apartment building in Syria had an epiphany to head for the Jordan border, or if an 8-year-old living in poverty, who's parents are struggling to put food on the table, has an epiphany to rummage through bins to get the sustenance their body needs.
This is why, when my boss told me he'd had an epiphany about flexi-time and how it had a detrimental effect on productivity, I started laughing. I was still laughing when I walked out the door and on to the dole.
Why are epiphanies the privilege of the wealthy and powerful? Because, put simply, they are a way of excusing their actions without having to present any evidence. So fuck epiphanies, and fuck my boss.