I’ve always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted—like all orphans—to be the object of someone’s affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat. Whatever be the case, life pains me.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep desire for affection and connection, highlighting the pain of feeling unloved or overlooked.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa reflects on the universal human need for love and acceptance. He articulates the emotional pain that comes from indifference and the longing for connection that can consume one’s thoughts and feelings. The comparison of love to a hunger illustrates how deeply this desire can affect one's sense of self and experiences in life. It suggests that the absence of affection can lead to a profound sense of loss, making one question the very nature of their needs and desires.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of emotional connections in our lives.
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.
Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone.
When you start supporting a football club, you don't support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history, you support it because you found yourself somewhere there; found a place where you belong.
We're reminded yet again: we are stronger, we are smarter, we have more fun when we include each other - when we include as many perspectives as possible.
We have to defend the migrant workers and give them our support and demand that they have the rights that workers here have from day one, but absolutely hate the system that forces people to leave their country, leave their homes, leave their families, to go somewhere else to be exploited.
The simple power of prayer can save us all kinds of time and trouble if we will ask God to give us wisdom and discernment in our relationships.
All farewells should be sudden, when forever.
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