Jun 23, 2021
Natural adult
”We’ve been living in a lethal fantasy, Hébert realized. We’ve lulled ourselves into believing that in an emergency, someone else will always come along to rescue us. We’ve stopped relying on our own wonderfully adaptable bodies; we’ve forgotten that we can think, climb, leap, run, throw, swim and fight with more versatility than any other creature on the planet. [...] He couldn’t remember the last time he saw any grown-up crawl, climb a tree, somersault to cushion a fall or even sprint. Which was strange, because until recently you weren’t an adult until you could rescue someone. Rites of passage for most cultures were based on sheer physical usefulness: you counted as a person only when you showed you could be counted on.”