I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the struggle of self-identity amidst external perceptions.
Fernando Pessoa's quote explores the complexity of self-awareness and identity. He expresses a realization that his true self exists in the gap between his aspirations and the identities others impose on him. This introspection leads to a desire for solitude, where he can find peace and authenticity away from societal expectations.
In practice
During a personal development workshop to encourage self-reflection.
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.
We're Americans, and we have a rendezvous with destiny . . . No people who have ever lived on this earth have fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom, or done more to advance the dignity of man than Americans.
Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
A human being becomes human not through the casual convergence of certain biological conditions, but through an act of will and love on the part of other people.
Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead, and the purpose surging in our nature responds.
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.