Everybody just turn around

Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard died on this day in 1855. He wrote:


"Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward."

   And what was the story? How had it all come to this? Surely he’d hoped for…for what? He’d wanted to be a ballplayer, but then what? Truth be told, nothing much. He’d been a drifter, adrift, sometimes on the sea of possibility, other times in the swamp of necessity, to borrow a line from someone. Kierkegaard? Kierkegaard, elsewhere, had summed him up nicely, as the man never present to himself, always either hoping or remembering, but not even present in his hoping or remembering. That man may remember, in consequence, a past he didn’t really experience, and as a hoping individual he always had a more gratifying disappointment.  --  Chapter 21, The Misforgotten. 

Don't forget this date

George Orwell was born on this day in 1903. In his novel 1984, Orwell's protagonist Winston Smith works in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so that they jibe with the "newspeak" of the current regime ruled by Big Brother.

In The Misforgotten, the protagonist revels in memories of events that may or may not have happened.

For more on Orwell and language visit Lexicon Avenue