Epiphany #9

"Rhetoric = ruling the world. Perceptions."

This is my first epiphany of the new school year! It happened in Physics for Future Presidents, where I am usually extremely attentive in class, but lightbulbs have their way of lighting up whenever they please. I must have been pondering minoring in Rhetoric, and I was thinking of the skills that I could possess by studying the subject more. The way I understand it, rhetoric gives one the ability to persuade an audience, or change people's perceptions. Rhetoric also teaches the skill of knowing when someone else is using a tool of persuasion. I was thinking about this, and then coupling it with the idea that all we "know" of the world is just known through our perceptions, and we as a human race have created things to identify and things to be real. Since our world's entire reality is all just a bunch of perceptions, learning rhetoric may be my key to ruling the world! (In a completely non-dominant way, of course.)
I think this epiphany came about because of Physics for Future Presidents's first class, where my professor first made the enormous disclaimer that physics is just another way of looking at the world. Reality is what I make it, nobody can tell me otherwise.

Epiphany #8

"You can only rise (transcend) so high before you have to realize that you, yourself, are also human."


I always hear friends talking about becoming vegetarian and vegan, or people trying their best to not be wasteful. I'm all for these things, becoming more eco-friendly and not consuming as much of the earth's resources as others, but there are those people who become so obsessed and extreme with their conservation that they may think that they are on the brink of becoming a human that doesn't do any damage to the earth whatsoever. (Of course, this could be totally off track, but it is a potential future for me that I have thought out, so I can judge it as much as I want.) As much as we try to conserve energy and choose healthy alternatives to dead cow, we are all human. That said, we all consume a lot of material and we all exert various pressures on sad mother Earth. This is a part of human life, and no matter how much you try to tone it down, we're still people who need water and food to survive. I'm never going to be able to reach maximum conservationist swag, because I suck away oxygen every day and I flush poop into sewers and I drink water frequently. 
This epiphany can also obviously be applied to anything; anyone who has a big head or thinks himself invincible at anytime has got to remind himself that he's a person just like the rest of us. 

Epiphany #7

"Outlook on life = outlook on yourself. Embrace."


Alright, so it's been a while since I've looked over my epiphanies, and my Linguistics class had its final exam months ago. But I was looking over my final study guide (it's all just a bunch of rainbow highlighter scribbles), and I even had epiphanies while STUDYING for my Linguistics final! 
Anyway, I heard from somewhere, perhaps it was a Lulu Lemon poster, that your outlook on life is a direct reflection on what you think of yourself. This epiphany was just a realization that since I'm getting two outlooks for the price of one, I'd better just be positive no matter what. I should embrace my flaws and my mistakes, and I should understand that I'm beautiful the way I am. Now, applying this to life itself (and the universe, and everything) may be a little more difficult for some, because it requires full embrace of everything that is. And some parts of life suck; some parts about Earth and human civilization suck as well. Modern society has had its share of mistakes and (albeit sometimes significant) flaws, but I should be willing to forgive life and find the beauty in it.