Geodesics - the fountain of youth

I was reading this NY Times article on Geodesics - a differential geometry term for the line that finds the most direct path between two points when compared to paths nearby. Not being a student of math or an admirer for that matter this explanation sent my mind in many other directions thinking about time and space as simple concepts and the innate (in-nate, as in the latin nasci to be born with it) mathematical knowledge humans seem to share.

We all try to move in the most economical of ways. Without really considering why (some of us could certainly use a bit more exercise) we all walk similar footpaths to our destination. "The Spaniaad [sic], if on foot, always travels as the crow flies, which the openness and dryness of the country permits; neither rivers nor the steepest mountains stop his course, he swims over the one and scales the other." - The London Review Of English And Foreign Liturature, by W. Kenrick - 1767 The Geodesic, a human mathematical discovery, is really just a relabeling of the natural instinct to fight time; An evolutionary trait acknowledging the greatest motivation of our self aware society: death.

It also makes me consider the human perspective in relation to the broader, albeit purely theoretical, world perspective. The local and the global. This is most easily evidenced by our use of two-dimensional maps. When we want to cross a field to sit under a tree we center the tree in our line of sight and walk towards it. This is because our perspective suggests the path is on a flat plane. To get from New York City to Rome we turn to a map and try to draw a similar straight line but that route would prove extremely out of the way because of the spherical shape of the earth. We scoff at the fly who bumps hopelessly against the window pane searching vainly for the point at which it entered, but are we any more adept?