Anagnorisis

Anagnorisis. That was the word used in the TED talk I was listening to on our teams drive back from Rhode Island. We had just lost two games in pretty convincing fashion and this TED talk was taking my mind off doing anything drastic at the wheel. (kidding/kind of) I love learning new words. When I worked at the YMCA a lady that was a member there used to bring in a box of flash cards with SAT words on them. (She was an English teacher) Every week she would give me about 20 to memorize, and then at the end of the week she would quiz me on them. (A little dorky yes but I loved it) So when the speaker said anagnorisis (which was a word I’ve never heard of) I made sure to make a mental note to look it up when we stopped to eat.

The TED speaker’s definition of the word was “the transition from ignorance to knowledge”. The word anagnorisis is usually, “a moment in a play or other work when the lead character makes a critical discovery”. The picture of Bruce Willis is from the movie The Sixth Sense. If you have never seen the movie I’m going to spoil it for you right now, much like most people did once they saw the movie and told everybody else. His character was a psychiatrist and all throughout the movie was helping this super creepy boy that saw dead people. The whole movie you thought you saw Bruce Willis’s character interacting with other people, but in the end (spoiler alert) you find out that he was really dead and a ghost the whole time. I used to have friends that would swear on family members that they knew he was a ghost before he revealed it, and I would say to them what I’m saying to those of you that feel the same way, “You’re Lying”.

Anyways the word is intriguing to me in a lot of ways. We get to see a character undergo a transformation right in front of our eyes. It could be negative to positive (think Green Eggs and Ham) or positive to negative (think Oedipus) There’s usually a moment that pushes the character over the edge in either direction. In Green Eggs and Ham it was the main character actually tasting the food and realizing that the color was the only thing that made the meal different. In Oedipus it was when he killed his father and married his mother. (That would be a Maury show in this day and age)

There are moments in our lives that give us a moment of clarity. In mine it had to be when I first started working with kids. I’m not exactly sure of the day or even the session but something told me that this is what I needed to do. Giving back was my calling and I was just too stubborn to see it beforehand. If you’re not open to changing then you won’t change. Tony Robbins can be in your living room talking to you for three days straight and it won’t matter. Bruce Willis’s character went through the whole movie believing he was alive because he didn’t see the signs that were telling him he wasn’t.

Have you had your anagnorisis moment yet? Is it right in front of you but you’re not allowing yourself to see it? If it’s the latter you might be preventing yourself from doing what you truly love to do. The “big reveal” might be your life’s calling or it could be an alarm to wake you up and get you back on track. Whatever the case may be you have to see when the moment comes. You might miss that moment of clarity on a daily basis.

I have friends that one day realize that they hate what they do for a living. After going through college majoring in the subject, then working over ten years in the field, they wake up and it hits them. “I’m not doing what I love”. The problem is a lot of people in this situation don’t take action to fix it. Instead of discovering what they want to do they pretend to be blind to the facts. They end up going through their whole movie doing what they hate until the final credits scroll down the screen.

It took Bruce Willis’s character two hours to figure it out, it took me seven years. I will tell you this I wouldn’t change any of the experiences I had before my moment of clarity. It helped not only shape me into who I am but it also makes me appreciate what I do every day that much more. How long will it take you?