The Illusion That Life Moves in Straight Lines

Few experiences are more discouraging than believing a struggle has finally been overcome, only to discover it waiting again around the next corner.

A person spends years trying to become more patient, only to lose their temper in a single difficult moment. Someone works hard to overcome insecurity, yet finds old fears resurfacing under pressure. Entire societies vow never to repeat past moral failures, only to drift slowly back toward the same patterns they once condemned.

If the same weaknesses keep returning, has any real growth occurred at all?

Modern culture intensifies this frustration because it presents progress as visible, immediate, and measurable. Success is expected to move in straight lines: improvement replacing weakness, confidence replacing uncertainty, achievement replacing struggle.

Social media magnifies the illusion. People display polished versions of transformation while concealing the slow, uneven reality beneath it. As a result, many quietly assume that ongoing struggle must mean ongoing failure.

But perhaps human growth does not move in straight lines at all.

An old Yiddish phrase describes a spiral staircase as a “shvindel trep” — literally, a “swindling staircase.” As one climbs its winding turns, the path becomes disorienting. It is difficult to tell how far one has come or how close one is to the top. At the final turn, there is often nothing visible except a wall directly ahead. Only after one more step does the opening suddenly appear.

The image captures something deeply true about human life.

While living through periods of struggle or repetition, progress often feels invisible.

This idea appears in the weekly Torah portion V’zot HaBerachah (Deuteronomy 33–34), the final portion of the Torah. Moses blesses the people shortly before his death, bringing the long wilderness journey toward its conclusion.

And yet Judaism does something remarkable at that exact moment.

The instant the Torah reading ends, it begins again immediately with the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning.”

There is no pause between ending and beginning.

The Torah does not conclude with closure. It returns directly to creation itself.

That ritual reflects a profound understanding of human growth. Life is not a straight ascent in which old struggles permanently disappear behind us. Instead, human beings revisit many of the same challenges repeatedly — but ideally from a different level of wisdom, humility, and self-awareness.

The cycle is not a circle trapping people in endless repetition. It is a spiral.

What makes a spiral rise is not the absence of struggle, but what the struggle produces within the person climbing it.

Repeated effort can deepen patience. Failure can cultivate humility. Disappointment can soften arrogance and awaken compassion. A person confronting the same weakness year after year is not necessarily standing still. The struggle itself may be shaping qualities that could not emerge any other way.

The same pattern unfolds within societies.

Civilizations repeatedly confront questions about power, truth, justice, freedom, and human dignity. Each generation believes its crises are unprecedented. In some ways, they are. Yet beneath the surface, humanity continues wrestling with many of the same moral tensions that have shaped history for centuries.

The danger comes when repetition is mistaken for failure.

When progress is not obvious, cynicism begins to grow. Institutions lose trust. Moral effort feels naïve. Personal growth begins to seem impossible.

Increasingly, modern culture confuses visibility with transformation.

But some of the deepest forms of growth happen almost entirely beneath the surface.

A seed underground appears lifeless long before it breaks through the soil. Muscles strengthen through repeated strain that feels uncomfortable while it is happening. Trust within relationships is often rebuilt quietly, through countless unseen decisions that slowly reshape the future.

Human character develops in much the same way.

The Torah’s ending reminds readers that renewal rarely announces itself dramatically in the moment. Often, growth becomes visible only in retrospect.

Moses himself never enters the Promised Land. From a purely linear perspective, his story appears incomplete. Yet the Torah refuses to frame his life as failure. His final act is to bless the people and prepare them to continue forward without him.

That may be one of the Torah’s most quietly radical ideas.

The meaning of human effort is not always visible to the person making the sacrifice.

Parents may never fully witness the values they planted within their children. Teachers may never know the lives they quietly redirected. Those struggling year after year to become wiser, calmer, kinder, or more disciplined may feel little measurable progress at all.

And yet the Torah insists that unseen growth is still real.

Moses never saw the finish line. He spent his life preparing others to cross it — and the Torah calls that a life of greatness.

Perhaps the most important transformations are the ones that cannot be fully measured while they are unfolding.

The spiral is still rising.

We just do not always get to see how high.

Yonatan Hambourger is a rabbi and teacher. He welcomes questions and comments at y@TasteofTorah.org. More of his work can be found at www.TasteofTorah.org.