😕 Nah! I know that won't happen before death: with nothing in the universe to worry about. Don't say that! It might happen tomorrow! Maybe it is even happening right now, only you are too busy worrying?

I was looking into the language of one of the last primitive tribes left, the Pirahã, who have no recursives (no dependent clauses). It is raining therefore I get wet, is not a reality for them. It is raining. I am wet. These situations exist alongside eachother, independently, as if in separate contexts and unconnected simultaneous "nows"(no linearity). There is no time line, so also no comparitives; for them a bad day cannot be followed by a worse day; maybe a bad day doesn't even exit. The volcano errupts. The crops are covered in lava. I am hungry. I am in bed. I am hungry. I am awake. I am looking at the stars. All very present in the now and factual and never consequential.

For the Pirahã things are "xibipío" = in and out of experience, like a flickering candle.

Nothing bad in any of the above situations, right? Until anxiety enters and we fear hunger might kill us. Or irritation distracts us and hunger becomes an uncomfortable sensation. For the Pirahã, there is only either hunger, or eating; or butterfly watching; etc and much fading in and out of reality as and when consciously observed. They also have no myth and story-telling culture, let alone history: once the testimonies become too old they are no longer relevant to them. The ultimate Zen People!

Maybe Pirahã with their “immediacy-of-experience principle” (empirical reality) can teach you to sleep to dream sweetly? Some say they are the happiest tribe on earth. Some say they are "primitively" naive. I say: don't knock it, till you've tried it!

photo source