"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing" - Marcus Aurelius

I had just got done riding my bicycle. I had my pump in hand and suddenly had an idea. "Take my picture," I implored my mother. And when she did, I raised the pump over my head and menaced the camera. It looked just like this.

Unfortunately, this predates the era of digital cameras, so I don't have a copy of the picture online.

I think the first thing to do in order to get to AHA moments is not to put too much pressure on yourself to say, "this is the moment when all my questions are answered."

Learn to enjoy the ambiguity more, and be thankful you are even in a position where you can ask the question.

Or, like a lot of war veterans are wont to say,

"Today is a good day. I woke up."

When I figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it.

My watch ran backwards for a few seconds.

hi hadjiboy. I think there are no 'aha' moments. People have series of epiphanies and they go back and forth on what those are, and on how well they put them to use etc.

That said. My aha moments recently have been the trite things that people put as sayings, sometimes millenia old. This time it's about counting blessings.

Sometimes the more obvious things like "right, I'm stressed about XYZ but it's good that XYZ is happening in the first place." Or that something has gotten really intense and that's a bother but it's nice that there's movement on that front.

Or the most basic. Like nice, hot water. A roof. The car works. The passport's not expired yet. The little things which add up as a miracle in concert and you don't notice it until something in the chain breaks [this particular aspect also reminds me to add redundancy to that chain though; getting backup equipment, emergency savings, etc.]

I think, even nearing my mid-20s, one aha moment I still struggle with is that it's okay to be yourself whoever you are. So much of our society and pop culture is geared towards making normative judgments on this is what kind of life is supposed to be fun, this is what sort of people are supposed to be happening, blah blah blah. But it all melts down in the end isn't it. Most people have the same psychological aspects to them whatever they do or wherever they are. Getting from one place to another or doing one thing instead of another doesn't make that huge a difference sometimes. Which I think is a good epiphany both ways in terms of feeling secure where you are and not feeling insecure about what others are.

"So much of our society and pop culture is geared towards making normative judgments on this is what kind of life is supposed to be fun, this is what sort of people are supposed to be happening"

I call the understanding of moments like this to be "Drugs without drugs" moments. No massive debt, ok job, foods ok, housing ok, vehicle ok, upkeep of personal appearance ok, health ok, etc... Damn, I feel great!

Do I need a million dollar home, $50k vehicle, idiotic shiny stuff on my body, and loads of slave manufactured products around me? AND the debt involved to pay it all off? Geez. Not owing money for stuff makes a lot of people far wealthier than they realize. This is a near-daily oh yeah aha yeah yeah moment for me.

Firas, buzzman--you took the words right out of my mouth. :)

hadjiboy, if the question you'd asked about belief really got you into a slump, you really really need to be careful about mixing intellectual discourse with emotional feelings. This is especially easy on the internet when we're debating things without social face-to-face interactions within which sometimes words can flow freely and people forget whatever they were talking about later; when it's just stark words on a screen battling it out with your thoughts. You shouldn't worry about engaging all sorts of intellectual tightrope walks when you're still putting yourself together. Remember that. Focus on the practical things, focus on the people around you--much more important.