RACHEL'S COLUMNS
These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age
In a spin and plunging into an epiphany
27th August 2004
I have no patience, I'm always in a hurry – I can barely wait long enough to get a dial tone on the telephone. Why am I always in such a hurry? I don't know! I feel like Kevin Rudd looks – as if life is passing me by and there's always some bit of action going on somewhere else that I should be involved in. Imagine my frustration a few days ago sitting in a cab next to a driver who moved as speedily as treacle going up a wall. I'm certain that any distance we covered was not fuelled by petrol, but by my flammable rage. Only minutes from our destination tortoise-man slowed down completely and pointed to a sign next to a pedestrian crossing. "Ever seen a sign like that before?" He mumbled.
I read the words out loud, "blind persons cross here", then I stared at the driver as though someone had just hit me with a stick on the back of the head. "I suppose it's for drivers to be alert to blind persons crossing?" I half-asked, not sure myself what it meant.
He took a deep breath and spoke calmly, accelerating to roughly five words per minute. "Maybe it's a sign to alert you to the extreme multiplicity of beings and things. When we're rushing we lose sight of the profound unity of the universe."
I reckon I'm usually pretty good at grasping the meaning of signs, especially those that say, Shoe Sale–huge reductions – but this sort of mystic haiku makes my mouth itch. OK, I was in Canberra, where cab drivers must have a Zen approach to life – afterall where else are the laws of cause and effect played out more obviously on a daily basis than in the nation's capital. But suddenly my world was fractured – I felt an empowerment akin to that sense of relief I have when I take off a pair of pantyhose I've been wearing all day. A friend suggested later that I'd had an epiphany – a moment of sudden revelation. Highly unlikely in Canberra, with a cab driver whose breath smelt like a herring left in the sun for three days. But anything is possible according to Miss Piggy and right now she's more kosher than any one else I'd be voting for in a federal election.
This must be the season for epiphanies – around August near the equinox, when the yin and yang of life that operates in all of us gets out of balance and we get cranky. Magazines are once again bursting with diets, healthy recipes and sleek bodies in preparation for summer. I'm not ready for summer, I still haven't recovered from last summer's insect bites and rashes. But the world keeps spinning and epiphanies, although useful, are not easy to deal with. They arrive without warning and like a vibrating footbath they can change your life forever.
Think for a moment about the high diver standing alone at the end of the diving board wearing nothing but a scrap of Lycra to camouflage their personal fears. The degree of difficulty is announced – a half pike with a twist, triple somersault, degree of difficulty 6.2. If only some one could map out my week for me with all its twists and turns and degree of difficulty and make that announcement before I jump, it would be so much easier to make sense of where it all went pear-shaped. (My latest epiphany).
Here are some techniques to help you keep on top of your epiphanies.
(1) Take a walk around your home and make a mental note of hot spots where you could have an epiphany, like on the couch clutching the remote control or under a doona tent in your bedroom. Try to spend time in those locations.
(2) Visualize being very old, say 100 years old, then meditate on how after everything you put your body through its a miracle that you're still walking around. This is particularly useful for hypochondriacs.
And finally, if our lives are indeed as fleeting as the Olympic diver's perfect routine – be sure your swimsuit is made of two-way stretch Lycra so you're covered on all fronts.
