When the past is allowed to remain what it is, the past, when a person leaves it by stepping onto a new path and does not look back too often, he himself is changed little by little, and the past is imperceptibly changed at the same time, and eventually they do not, so to speak, suit each other. The past fades away into a less definite form, becomes a recollection, and the recollection becomes less and less terrifying. It becomes quieter, it becomes gentle, it becomes sad, and in each of these attributes it is becoming more and more distanced. Finally the past becomes almost alien to him; he does not comprehend how he could possibly have gone astray in that way, and he hears recollection’s account of it just as the traveler hears a legend in a distant land.
Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses (via freelance-philosopher)
