I think I just had an epiphany. All day, I've been asking myself why I feel compelled to satirize everything, even when some of this stuff isn't really all that funny. Tragic, maybe, and often surreal, but those aren't necessarily reasons for turning everything into some kind of joke. Then a little voice whispered in my ear: All the world is a stage!
But that wasn't the epiphany. I contemplated the stage angle anyway, and the gnawing feeling I've had—since childhood, really—that I'm trapped in some kind of bizarre stage production. It's a theater of the absurd, but I'm not just a casual observer out there in the audience somewhere. I'm an active cast member, and the play is interactive. I satirize every situation because every situation is satirical. It's all about perception.
But that wasn't the epiphany, either. After lunch, I decided to take a walk along the seashore. Aside from the absence of any significant body of water around here, I thought this would be the ideal environment for an epiphany, should one occur. I had a couple near-epiphanies, but those turned out to be mostly because of the egg salad sandwiches. Then, out of the blue, something else hit me. Seagulls are like that sometimes.
It wasn't until I returned home that the real epiphany struck: I'm not satirizing anything! I'm merely commenting on the obvious; I'm only recording what I see. This was the misunderstanding all along. In fact, I'm the one being satirized, and not the other way around. The joke, I fear, is on me.
An old man once told me that the best thing for an epiphany is a sharp blow to the forehead. It's still a little bit red, but the dizziness is going away by and by, and I'm pretty sure I won't be having any more for a while. Epiphanies, I mean. So guh.
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