Does time progress on a straight line from left to right, right to left or down? Or like a small or large bottle filling up? And is the future ahead of us, where we can walk towards it, however hazy it might be on the horizon? Or are we stationary and our future life events are unknown and hidden, passing us from behind, from where we can't see them?
Fascinating research and read.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221103-how-language-warps-the-way-you-perceive-time-and-space
How language and culture influence our perception of the world didn't really become apparent to me until I started travelling and learning to speak other languages to a conversational level - namely, Spanish and Thai.
Different words, idioms, grammar and time structure that at first seemed incongruous with what I thought I knew.
Through all this, I started to realise that my cognition could be completely alien elsewhere. That there are other ways of comprehending, remembering and being. Other lenses and other normals. And that, beyond language alone, many of the stories I'd been conditioned to believe throughout my childhood and adolescence in the UK were influenced by some strong bias or incomplete.
I'm certainly now a better listener for all of it.
What about you? What have your experiences been?
Ben Salt