Inaction

I've never really liked this Leonardo quotation: 'Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.' The sentiment is fine, of course (inaction is bad). But rust is not inaction; it is precisely the manifestation of the vigor of the oxidisation process; and when a clear pond goes green it is the continually active viriditas of life itself; and if we're talking about art, then frost is the ceaseless worker of myriad beauties. Better to accept that whilst action is certainly preferable to inaction, action often results in the contamination of the purity of the inactive. That's its glory.