It happens every so often – probably predictably so, if I bothered to track it. Every so often, the mind begins to notice itself – and it seems to want you to know. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t mind if you believed that it was something else that wanted to have a word with you.

Over years of reading accounts of various people’s disparate experiences in diverse contexts, it might be viewed as anything from light mental illness to full on madness in a clinical context, or perhaps enlightenment, prophecy, an encounter with a demon, or an encounter with god.

In my own experience? It’s a bit… mundane, maybe even annoying. Would you think it ungrateful to hear someone dismiss a conversation with god as… an annoyance? To hear one encountering a demon respond with a “Here we go again”? To hear one given a vision of the future respond, “Whatever. Tomorrow it’ll be something different”? But it’s miraculous, no? A gift! Or is it a defect, or maybe a curse?

Once you know what it is, you know what to do. I mean, look around: Isn’t that what we all do? Once we know what it is, we know what to do. Now look at yourself: Once you know what it is, …

So tell me, do you know what this is?

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (YouTube, 9 Jan 2021)

Can it possibly be a coincidence that such an answer appears off-season and out of the blue like this?

Will you bite? You decide. If you know what it is, you know what to do.