We Possess No Other Life

It would be futile to turn away from the past and think only about the future. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that there is even a possibility. The opposition between the past and the future is absurd. The future brings us nothing, gives us nothing; It is we who, in order to build it, must give it everything, give it our life itself. To give we must possess, and we possess no other life, no other sap, than the treasures inherited from the past and digested, assimilated, recreated by us. Of all the needs of the human soul, there is none more vital than the past.

Simone Weil
from L'enracinement