I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the contemplation and preparation required for life itself.
This quote by Fernando Pessoa captures the essence of waking up to existence as a thoughtful and intentional process. It suggests that to 'exist' is not merely to live but to engage deeply with oneself and the world, taking time to prepare mentally and emotionally for the day ahead.
In practice
In a motivational speech focused on self-awareness.
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.
The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.
If companies can refuse to provide coverage for women, what other objections to the Affordable Care Act will we see based on 'religious grounds'? For that matter, will 'religious freedom' be used as an excuse to discriminate against other minorities and disenfranchised groups across the board? Where will it end?
With the magnificence of eternity before us, let time, with all its fluctuations, dwindle into its own littleness.
This I can declare: things that are in heaven are more real than things that are in the world.
No salvation without regeneration - no spiritual life without a new birth - no heaven without a new heart.
God is not in the vastness of greatness. He is hid in the vastness of smallness . He is not in the general. He is in the particular.
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