• When English speakers use hand gestures to talk about the past and the future, they thrust a hand over the shoulder for the past and put a hand forward to indicate the future. English speakers also talk of the past as "leaving behind" and the future as "looking forward."
• The Yupno ...

We let our knowledge and experiences of the past project into our future, by making concrete predictions that this or that cannot happen due to what happened in the past.

But life is constantly changing, flowing like a river, and does not follow past patterns.

Future progress is underrated because past progress is misunderstood.

• There are times when optimism is so great and so broad that we become blind to future risks
• People tend to be optimistic about their own future but pessimistic about others. ...