The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the pain of unfulfilled emotions impacting one's current state of being.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa expresses the idea that the absence of certain feelings or experiences can create a persistent sense of longing and unease in the present. It suggests that the emotional gaps left by what we do not feel can weigh heavily on our hearts, creating a gnawing sensation that hinders our ability to fully engage with the present moment.
In practice
In a reflective piece about emotional struggles in a blog post.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,- The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.
When I travel and speak across the country, I often tell college students that we are making a significant mistake when we say to each other that this criminal justice of ours is broken. To say it's broken would be to suggest that it was well designed and had good intentions from the start.
Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed.... I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil.
Being harmless means being so strong, so empowered, that the idea of showing power through harm is not even a part of your consciousness.
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