We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it in lives to come. - Milan Kundera

You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more.

At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator's tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over-familiar banality of private life.

Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.