Tangential Thinking
I don’t know if this term is one somebody else coined, or if it has other meanings elsewhere, but what it means to me is clear. Life is a series of points on a curve of no discernible shape. No orderly function produced it. There are as many bends and folds as there are numbingly straight passages. The only guarantee is that, as it has bent before, it will bend again. The chief mistake of the student of this line is to project its future course as a tangent from the present. Someday it will bend away from that projection, and the tangent that seems so sure now will vanish. This mistake is easy to make. There are many straight passages, some so long as to suggest a guiding hand. If there is a guiding hand, it seems bent on tempting the complacent into despair and the despairing into complacency. Guard your mind against both temptations.