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“I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”

– L’Étranger, Albert Camus

My mother always shared with me the importance of looking to other perspectives; she surely got that from this writer, Albert Camus (1913-1960).

It’s true that every single language on the planet offers its own unique, carefully honed perspective on the world. From the Aboriginal Australian language Guugu Yimithirr which endows speakers with in-built compasses inside their heads, not differentiating between left and right but rather using the cardinal directions (North, South, East, West, Northeast, etc.), asking you to move to the East rather than to the right for example, to Europe’s splendid literary tongues like English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and German, the world’s languages are beyond incredible resources. Today, meanwhile, we find respite from the inherent complexity of diversity thanks to Algerian-born French Nobel laureate Camus and his smoothly, zealously refined angle on •being alive•.