Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

Ferber contrasts nostalgia with forward motion. “Living the past” is portrayed as isolating (“dull and lonely”) because it withdraws a person from the shared, changing present. The physical image—turning one’s head backward until the neck strains—turns sentimentality into a practical hazard: if you keep watching what’s behind you, you collide with those moving ahead on different paths. The line reads as a brisk, modern admonition to treat memory as something to learn from rather than inhabit, and to recognize that fixation on what was can impede relationships, adaptability, and purposeful action.