The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the pain of yearning for the unattainable and feeling dissatisfaction with reality.
Fernando Pessoa's quote delves into the complexity of human emotions, particularly the anguish that arises from longing for things that are impossible or never were. He suggests that such feelings, including nostalgia and regret, create a persistent inner turmoil that colors our perception of life, resulting in an unending struggle between what is and what could be.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of regret during a therapy session.
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.
Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.
It is not that there are no certainties, it is that it is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties.
There is a fear of voluptuousness that is itself voluptuous, just as a certain fear of death can itself be deadly.
I am not interested in the past. I am interested in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life.
A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.
They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.
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