Straight Lines not Circles

As a young person I loved the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  I was convinced that I could make any decision, see if I liked the outcome, and then flip to a different page if I didn't (often this resulted in death by careening off of a cliff, but that seemed to be fine as well).  Repercussions from actions seem to get a bit heavier as I get older, but I'm also realizing that they probably deserve only to be given the same weight I gave them when I was younger--I don't recall spending a great deal of time agonizing over whether I should take the trek to the Amazon or fly to Rio.  At some point in the last decade I lost the spring to my coil, and my levels of resilience seem a bit low.  (This could be because as an adult, I'd like to change the page, but I can't simply flip at whim--now there are other factors beyond my control teaching me patience before allowing me to flip to my next adventure).

I was particularly struck by a line from Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun last week.  Asagai tells Beneatha that where she has gone wrong is seeing life as a circle on which we are trapped...and instead should be viewing this as a straight line moving beyond sight...and beyond the scope of our current understandings of what our lives can be:

       "What you just said about the circle.  It isn't a circle--it is simply a long line--as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity.  And because we cannot see the end--we also cannot see how it changes.  And it is very odd but those who see the changes--who dream, who will not give up--are called idealists...and those who see only the circle, we call them the 'realists'!"  (p. 162).

And I've been wondering about this.  I trapped myself for a time in a narrative that didn't fit, but one that I couldn't see my way out of.  And now that I can, the line looms long in front of me--alternately full of huge possibility and alternately scary as shit.  I dwell in the possibility more often than the fear, thankfully.  And, for the first time in a long time, realize that I will continually be revising my path--that the circle I was in, despite being prescribed and condoned by society, wasn't really a good fit.  And it took a woman writer from the 1950s to give me a frame for even beginning to visualize this.