Epiphony?

Epiphany is a funny, contradictory term - simply put, it means ‘moment of clarity’, but suffers from both inappropriate usage and overuse, possibly because attempts to explain its meaning itself appear to be muddled at worst and incomprehensive at best, implying lack of clarity in the mind of whoever invented this word. It is elusive by definition (‘moment’ of clarity), and ranges from the utterly mundane (but quite interestingly non-intuitive, e.g., the realization that tilting the bowl away from self to scoop up the last remains of soup avoids risk of spillage on clothes) to the thoroughly profound (the realization that there is a ‘God’ particle that gives matter its mass, and building a 17-mile long $10 billion tunnel to help prove that notion).

It has a mysterious context to it, possibly implying divine intervention, input from a universal collective consciousness, or simply a conclusion reached by the brain after numerous hours of background processing (unbeknownst to the active mind) since the problem/questions is first posed. No dictionary definition covers this – context of the word is left to conjecture, use (or mis-use) of the word is open/subject to interpretation, and impact of the word is lost if everyone has an epiphany on a regular basis. All this begs the question – is it a phony word?

Musical Credits: Kartik Kapil on Guitar, Dennis William on Drums, and Pankaj Kanth on Bass