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.
If it's fiction, then it better be true.
Watch out for people who call themselves religious; make sure you know what they mean - make sure they know what they mean!
Don't search for heaven and hell in the future. Both are now present. Whenever we manage to love without expectations, calculations, negotiations, we are indeed in heaven. Whenever we fight, hate, we are in hell.
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
Night's candles have burned out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." Hope tinged with melancholy - like life.
Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience, of which the purpose is too deep, going too deep in the blood and soul, for mental explanation or description.
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