Like water that has been blocked, our ambitions and enthusiasms will need to seek alternative channels down which to flow. We will have to create new stories about who we are and what counts. We may need to forgive ourselves for errors and give up on a need to feel exceptional.

We, the ones who have crawled back from the darkness, may be disadvantaged in a hundred ways, but at least we will have had to find, rather than assumed or inherited, reasons why we are still here. Every day we continue will be a day earned back from death, and our satisfactions will be all the more intense and our gratitude more profound for having been consciously arrived at.

Alain de Botton, Therapeutic Journey

How can anyone presume to know what went on in prehistoric times without indulging in make-believe?

The actual written records we have for any language extend at most 5,000 years into the past, and the languages that are attested by that time are by no means ‘primitive’. This means that the primitive stage, which can rather loosely be called the ‘me Tarzan’ stage, must lie long before records begin, deep in the prehistoric past.

The crux of the answer is one of the fundamental insights of linguistics: the present is the key to the past.

This tenet, borrowed from geology in the 19th century, bears the intimidating title ‘uniformitarianism’, but stands for an idea that is as simple as it is powerful:

The forces that created elaborate features of language cannot be confined to prehistory, but must be thriving even now, busy creating new structures in the languages of today.

Perhaps surprisingly, then, the best way of unlocking the past is not always to peer at faded runes on ancient stones, but also to examine the languages of now.

Guy Deutscher, Unfolding Of Language

As earthbound creatures we live our lives within the bounds of the sky and the ground, constantly beneath the one and above the other.

The experience of existing between two vast realms involves a perpetually distorted perspective of both: we experience the ground as flat and solid beneath us, and the sky as a giant, domed ceiling above, yet neither realm actually has those characteristics.

The earth, in fact, is curved beneath us and in a constant state of change (as the geological record shows).

The sky is simply our window into the vast universe.

Molly Kaderka

Since all motion is relative, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re falling downward through the air or the air is blowing upward past you.

At least, from a physics point of view.

It probably matters a lot to you personally.

Randall Munroe, How To

We sidle up to some compadres conferring streamside…

Soaring: Life must be lived facing downstream but can only be understood facing upstream.

P Willy: So take care to look both ways while crossing the stream.

Freddy: No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the stream.

Carly: It means launching oneself fully into the stream.

Craig: Do you see what a metaphysical can of worms this stream is?

Lenin: Just turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

Enticer: You guys silly? I’m just gonna send it…

Dude: Hey, careful man—there’s a beverage here, hey!