I am the escaped one, After I was born They locked me up inside me But I left. My soul seeks me, Through hills and valley, I hope my soul Never finds me.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a struggle between the self and the inner psyche, highlighting the search for identity and freedom.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa expresses a profound internal conflict, where the speaker feels imprisoned by their own existence yet longs for freedom and self-discovery. The imagery of hills and valleys suggests a deep journey through life's complexities, with the hope that the true self remains elusive, symbolizing the tension between the conscious and unconscious aspects of identity.
In practice
In a discussion about personal growth and self-awareness, this quote can illustrate the challenges of understanding one's true self.
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.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
Much of the conventional analysis of India's stature in the world relies on the all-too-familiar economic assumptions. But we are famously a land of paradoxes, and one of those paradoxes is that so many speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ all our people.
It is unconceivable that the whole Universe was merely created for us who live in this third-rate planet of a third-rate moon.
If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.
Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
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