I was in my 40s before I learned that “washing your face in the shower” is so much easier if you exhale slowly through your nose and mouth while rinsing. It’s also a really good idea when you’re tipping your head back to wash your hair, to plant one of your feet at the edge of the tub or shower. This gives your brain a better reference to what “up” and “down” are when you’ve got your head tipped back and eyes closed under water that’s spraying on you at an angle. This didn’t matter so much when I was younger, but now that I am old, it’s pretty much a necessity. Falling in the shower is incredibly dangerous.

Okay I have a sudden thought.

You know how sometimes you’ll be, say, walking over a bridge, and your brain will say “YEET YOUR PHONE INTO THE RIVER!” And you’re like “Fuck no, why would I do that?” and you stick your phone in your pocket and move away from the railing?

Call of the void. I’m convinced that this is your primitive brain’s way of reminding you what not to do by creating “dangerous” situations for you to respond to in the appropriate way, because we just don’t run into dangerous situations like that very often in modern societies.

Extending from that, I think that there’s a time in young children where their brains have advanced to be able to do the “call of the void” thing, maybe triggered by an accident with dog food or a bottle of water, but haven’t advanced to where they don’t answer that call.

All of the above is constructed out of pure speculation. But it sounds good to me.