Climax

On the evening of Thursday, May 27th, I sat on the Mountain View bleachers next to Riley Hatch, gazing out at the mass of 800 graduating seniors on the football field. Dressed in their blue gowns and tasseled hats, the seniors sat in rows of chairs, listening to the speakers and waiting anxiously for their diplomas.

Riley and I wistfully wondered about what it would feel like to be in their position--finally graduating from high school. One of the speakers referred to graduating as the climax of their lives.

~ ~ ~



At this point, you're probably thinking, "NO! THE DREADED PLOT MAP! I thought school was over!?!?"

Well, I intend to take you back for just one moment.

Think about a plot map in terms of LIFE (including more/less of the literary terms on this particular plot map). What event in life would you identify as the inciting incident? What type of conflict is included in life? What are the rising actions, the climax, the falling actions, and the resolution? IS there a denouement?

For the inciting incident, I immediately thought birth. It is the moment at which you enter life here on this earth. However, the inciting incident could even be taken farther back to the very creation of life at the beginning of this world.

As for the conflict, I believe that life combines all of the different types of conflicts into one. At any given time in life, we are facing some sort of conflict. Whether it is between us and one opposing person, or us and an entire group of people, we are constantly faced with conflicts in life.

Next comes rising action...

But as Riley and I thought about life's plot map, we couldn't find any particular moments that lead up to just one, great, fantastic moment.

As Riley put it, "In the plot map of life, every event is the rising action."

Might I suggest even further that life is an eternal line of climaxes.

An eternal line of climaxes.

That means that there is no particular event that our everyday actions are leading up to. After graduation, there is still your mission, your marriage, your first house, your first baby, your first grandchild--the list goes on and on. And the little things in between--the trials and hard times--are just helping you along to the next climax. Even death doesn't stop the plot map.

An eternal line of climaxes.

We may choose to let our lives mirror the plot map above--different events leading up to one single climax, followed by a set of falling actions until the end of our mortal existence.

Or, we could choose to make the events in our lives continual rising actions--different events leading up to not just one climax, but several.

I hope that we all choose to live life so that every action aids us in continuing to the next climax, and the next, and the next.

~ ~ ~

If you know Riley, you know that she loves thinking about the future. I can see why she thought of life this way, and I love it.

Sitting on those Mountain View bleachers made me anxious--not only to reach the climax of graduation, but to continue upward on my plot map of life, reaching every climax that is able to be reached.