A number without end—
Chasing something just out of reach.
Not failure. Just the limit.
The Classroom with the Flickering Light
I was fourteen.
The kind of fourteen that felt older than it was—shoulders already tired, eyes already searching for something unnamed. It was winter, and the heater in our classroom made a sound like a dying radio. The math teacher, Mr. Feller, had a voice that didn’t rise or fall. Everything he said floated just above silence, like snow that never landed.
That day, he drew a line on the board. Not a straight one, but one that curved—gently, then more gently still. He wrote above it:
lim → ∞
“The function gets closer and closer,” he said, tapping the chalk against the board, “but it never touches the line. It keeps going, forever approaching, but never arriving.”
It hit me harder than it should’ve.
Not because of math. I was average at math. But because suddenly, something inside me cracked open.
I saw myself in that curve.
The Curve and the Curse
From then on, I lived my life like a limit.
Always approaching—never arriving.
Every goal just a fraction away. Every love just a shade off.
I became obsessed with “almost.”
Almost got the grade.
Almost said what I meant.
Almost told her I loved her before she moved away.
That idea—of striving endlessly—became a kind of faith.
If I could just work harder, be smarter, more charming, less afraid… maybe I’d reach it.
Reach what?
I never knew.
Just… it.
The line. The answer. The arrival.
But it never came.
Wabi-Sabi and the Elegance of Unfinished Things
It took years to see it differently. To realize that maybe the lesson wasn’t about chasing forever. Maybe it was about accepting that you don’t have to touch the line to have meaning.
There’s beauty in approaching.
There’s grace in incompletion.
That moment in the math classroom wasn’t a curse—it was a mirror. A truth wrapped in symbols and chalk dust. That our lives, like that curve, don’t need to end in perfect symmetry. They only need to bend toward something honest.
Lessons from the Curve
- Not all destinations need arrival. The motion is enough.
- Perfection is not the point. Direction is.
- Sometimes the closest we get is the most we need.
- The line wasn’t the goal. The curve was.
- And maybe, just maybe—lim → ∞ is not a warning. It’s a gift.
I still think about that lesson sometimes,
when I’m reaching for something I can’t name,
or standing at the edge of a feeling I can’t describe.
It comforts me,
that curve.
Still bending.
Still beautiful.
Still becoming.
life 
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