Continuing the backwards and forwards reflections, a look at how different cultures or languages look at the passage of time.
We English speakers tend to look ahead, as we progress into the future, and commonly look forward to (usually pleasant) things happening. In the French language this looking forward does not take place. Instead, one waits in anticipation, or impatiently or for the pleasure of seeing something develop.
In other cultures you cannot look into the future at all. The future is seen as something unknowable into which one is reversing, blind. You can only look back on what has already happened.
And what should we make of Janus the Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who looked both forwards and backwards?
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