The Life Impossible

by Matt Haig

It occurred to me that I had never been young. Even at twenty-one I’d have found that schedule – dancing all night, sleeping on sun loungers all day – exhausting.

If only we could always have the perspective of the future with us as we live that present.

We are never at the end of history. And we are not at the end of science.’

Einstein said. Sometimes the illusion is the reality we don’t understand yet.’

You see, if you want to visit a new world, you don’t need a spacecraft. All you need to do is change your mind.

in mathematics, you realise that balance and symmetry is actually in everything, even when it feels like chaos or pain.

‘Galileo called mathematics the language of the book of nature. And we are trapped inside that book. We are words in that language. So it is hard to read and absorb and appreciate what we are inside, what we are familiar with. Just as Marta said, there are patterns everywhere.’

The recurring mathematics of the natural world. The Fibonacci spirals found in whirlpools and pine cones and created by humpback whales in Antarctica to capture prey. Our blood vessels patterned like fork lightning

The fabric of the cosmos is woven with fractals and so are we. We are not alone in the universe, and we are not alone on Earth. We are connected not just to each other and not just to primates but to everything.