A reminder from Adriel: this ain’t an academic paper so I don’t document, cite, or follow the MLA stylesheet. So here is something from one of my favorite philosophers:
Bertrand Russell once said, “An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.”