to rest on one´s laurels?

"Humans achieve their peak in different ways.  But whoever you are, once you´re over the summit, it´s downhill all the way.  Nothing anyone can do about it.  And the worst of it is, you never know where the peak is.  You think you´re still going strong, when suddenly you ´ve crossed the great divide.  No one can tell.  Some people peak at twelve, then live rather uneventful lives from then on.  Some carry on until they die; some die at their peak.  Poets and composers have lived like furies, pushing themselves to such a pitch  they´re gone by thirty.  Then there are those like Picasso who kept breaking ground until well past eighty.
And what about me?
My peak? Would I even have one?  I hardly had had anything you could call a life.  A few ripples.  Some rises and falls.  But that´s it.  Almost nothing.  Nothing born of nothing.  I´d loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show.  It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape.  I felt like I was in video game.  A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines.  The only certain was my death.
No promises you´re gonna be happy, the Sheep Man had said. So you gotta dance. Dance so it all keeps spinning.
I gave up and closed my eyes."

Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami