Sometimes, insight comes in a flash of inspiration—the fall of a proverbial Newtonian apple, striking one’s noggin and yielding a world-changing epiphany.
But those times are rare. There’s a reason they are the stuff of legend.
Insight is most commonly a more gradual thing, like the creeping illumination of the horizon just before dawn.
And so, it is here.
Like many people across the South, our family weathered Hurricane Helene’s stronger-than-expected apocalypse last week. We underestimated Helene, and she proceeded to remind us why that sort of hubris is the height of folly.
As the storm struck our neighborhood, my son and his wife called us. Concerned about the storm’s ferocity, they asked if they could relocate to our house to ride out the storm, as their home (about a block away from our own) was surrounded by trees. Of course, we said yes.
The next day, they found four trees on their roof.
In the storm’s aftermath, a client of my son’s law practice died from carbon monoxide poisoning. A patient of mine whose home flooded with Hurricane Debbie a few weeks ago lost three cars to falling trees. Along with many of our friends and associates, we suffered through the inconveniences of power outages and the loss of internet service. We had to close our medical practice for a couple of days because we had no power.