Welcome to Morning Open Thread
This is a daily post with a MOTley crew of hosts who choose the topic for the day's posting. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
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I was grazing through Google looking for inspiration for this morning’s post, and came across something called ‘Shower Thoughts’ which touted the idea that people have little epiphanies while showering, and invited readers to share them. Sadly, I found the posts which I briefly sampled were just like the thoughts which people have when they are not in the shower.
But surely the idea of shower epiphanies came from somewhere? Perhaps the site was inspired by the legend of Archimedes, who reportedly proclaimed "Eureka! Eureka!" after he had stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose, whereupon he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. The story first appeared in written form in Vitruvius’s books of architecture, two centuries later, which has caused some scholars to doubt its veracity.
Nevertheless, “Eureka” has been a popular cry of discovery ever since. It is the motto of the state of California because of the discovery of gold here in 1848 which caused the mass incursion of the ‘49ers, dreaming of a quick and easy way to wealth, which turned out to not be quick, easy or very profitable. The overwhelming majority of those who got rich did so by selling supplies to the ‘49ers instead of panning for gold themselves.
More recently, it became the title of a TV show about geniuses living in an isolated Government-created town working on Top Secret projects from the weird to the wonderful to the downright scary. My husband and I were fans of the series, and very sorry when it went off the air, especially since the actor who played Eureka’s “Everyman” sheriff now makes his living portraying assorted household appliances in commercials.
I’ve been trying to remember if I’ve ever had one of these shower epiphanies. Nothing has come to mind. My husband, even less of a morning person than I am, says he’s had them, but they are like dreams, which he’s forgotten by the time he’s getting dressed. I’m usually inspired just as I’m about to go to sleep, so then I have to get up and write it down. This leaves me wide awake, and brooding for most of the night — or else I resolutely turn over, and the idea is lost.
When I looked for ‘shower songs’ on YouTube, there were an astonishing number of white noise videos, some several hours long, which claimed to be soothing for nerves and helpful in combating insomnia. No mention of inspiring epiphanies. Of course, ever since 1960 when Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho first appeared in movie theaters, there are many people who no longer find the sound of a shower soothing, but anxiety seldom produces epiphanies either. Typing in ‘singing in the shower’ didn’t produce very inspiring results either.
G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
Aside from the quote under our red-yellow sun, is this idea “all wet”?
Have any of you actually had a ‘shower epiphany’?
Inquiring minds want to know.