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.
Interpretation
The quote expresses skepticism about the depth of friendship, suggesting that acquaintances may only feel a superficial concern.
Fernando Pessoa reflects on the nature of friendship, implying that what we often call friends are, in reality, merely acquaintances who may feel a fleeting sense of pity rather than genuine care. He questions the authenticity of these relationships, suggesting that true friends are rare, and that many people only express concern in response to dramatic events rather than through everyday support and connection.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of friendships at a social gathering.
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.
In a Ramada Inn near the grapevine, they stop to rest for the night. Traveling down south, looking for good times. Visiting old friends feels right.
Friends of my youth, a last adieu! haply some day we meet again; _x000D_ Yet ne'er the self-same men shall meet; the years shall make us other men.
So far be distant; and good night, sweet friend: thy love ne'er alter, till they sweet life end
I don't want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.
You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.
Grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years - a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds.
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