Eureka! An It clicked! moment.

The phrase "waste not, want not" never quite made sense to me. Those dueling negatives always threw me off. I know the general meaning of the phrase. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the comma is a placeholder for the word "or", and so the phrase itself is to be used to admonish somebody who is wasting something, ala "now now, if you are going to waste that bit of it, then you must not have wanted it that badly in the first place!"

But that didn't quite make sense...it seems a little redundant, and not very effective at its goal. I mean, hell, if somebody is wasting something, it's probably due to the exact reason of them not wanting it.

Just a few moments ago, though, I finally figured it out. If the word "want" is replaced with "need", it turns into the more general moral lesson that it was intended to be: "if you never waste anything, you'll never be in need of anything."

I think moments like these are some of the best there are. A spark of creativity a/o inspiration, a sudden spontaneous learning, a brief panic because for all those years you've been saying/understanding something wrong to everybody you've ever met, and then a sigh of relief that at least the ignorance is over. It's kinda like Bananas Foster. Anybody have an especially similar moment?

When in Rome...