Another literary gem from the Norton Anthology of Personal Essays. This one is from Dawn Powell's "What Are You Doing in My Dreams?":
"Do you know how some people's lives seem to stop like a clock at a certain mark? They go on living, get married, have families, save money, travel around the world, trade in their cars and houses and jobs, but all that is their dead life. Their life really stopped the year they were captain of the high school football team, the year they had the lead in the college play, the day they quit Paris or the army or the newspaper job. Other jobs and mates come and go, babies grow up and have babies, the exercise horse is mounted each day as if it was really going somewhere, but all the time the rider is transfixed in an old college song or in Tony's speakeasy or in that regiment."
Well, I certainly hope that this phenomenon will never plague my life! I don't want my life to take on the shape of a bell curve--I'd like to think that it is a line that continually moves upwards. Of course, there are times when the line goes backward, even plunging down numerous increments, but I hope it always finds its way back up--towards increased growth. Perhaps the equation of my life would be something like (2x + 1) or 3a(4b +5). Something like that...a positive function.
Positive Functions of Life
