EPIPHANY

“It doesn’t matter if the glass is half full or half empty. I am gonna drink it through this crazy straw.”

Joey Comedu, author

Epiphany is defined as, “A moment of sudden revelation or insight.” So, I guess that means I had an epiphany when I decided to stop suffering from mental illness and start enjoying it. After years of being treated for bouts of depression I decided to take the advice of television minister Dr. Robert Schuller.

He said, “Make your burden a blessing.”

Now about that crazy straw Joey mentioned. A psychiatrist suggested I start running. I followed his prescription, got my endorphins hopping and signed up for some races. Then I joined a running club, made some great friends, and raised money for some worthy charities. Running didn’t cure all my maladies but it sure helped. Coleman Young, author of Hard Stuff and the first African American mayor of Detroit said, “There is no brilliant single stroke that is going to transform the water into wine or straw into gold.”

Like the Scarecrow made of straw in The Wizard of Oz who wanted a brain, I needed more help. In my search for sanity I have always enjoyed stories and sermons by Norman Vincent Peale, Fulton J. Sheen, Charles Kuralt, and Leo Buscaglia. They taught me there are people out there with a stack of problems way bigger than mine who turned tragedy into triumph. So my next step was writing some stories of my own.  

The Nobel Prize winning poet Louise Gluck said, “Writing is a kind of revenge against circumstance too: bad luck, loss, pain, if you make something out of it, then you are no longer bested by these events.”  After taking some writing classes, my essays of hope and laughter began to appear in church newsletters, local papers and devotional books.

And that brings us to what I call Rim Shot Therapy. I have performed stand-up comedy, worked as a clown, participated in an improvisation class, and acted in theater. I can sum up this experience with a line from the movie, As Good as It Gets. One character in the film tells his friend, “The best thing you have going for yourself is your willingness to humiliate yourself.”

Have the courage to try new things. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. The poet Edmund Spenser observed, “And he that strives to touch the stars, oft stumbles at a straw. Failure can be your friend provided you learn from it and get back in the game of life.

The best advice I have is practice gratitude. Counting your blessings is the most important math you’ll ever do. And when you’re done counting, pray for those you know are suffering.

And the last word about straw comes from author Jane Staton Hitchcock. “The key to life is imagination. If you don’t have that, no matter what you have, it’s meaningless. If you do have imagination…you can make feast of straw.”