The Past

“There is a stillness and everlastingness about the past; it changes not and has a touch of eternity, like a painted picture or a statue in bronze or marble. Unaffected by the storms and upheavals of the present, it maintains its dignity a SC xxnd repose and tempts the troubled spirit and xxs 22 22 by access ZZ z dressed up see do as er aa a aais see as the tortured mind to seek shelter in its vaulted catacombs. There is peace there and security, and one may even sense a spiritual quality.
But it is not life, unless we can find the vital links between it and the present with all its conflicts and problems. It is a kind of art for art's sake, without the passion and the urge to action which are the very stuff of life. Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lode tower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us.
― Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India