I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for authenticity over being fully understood by others, suggesting that compromising oneself for understanding can diminish one's individuality.
Fernando Pessoa's quote highlights the complex relationship between self-perception and how we are perceived by others. It suggests that striving for understanding can lead to a loss of authenticity, as individuals may conform to others' expectations in order to be accepted. Instead, Pessoa advocates for embracing the mystery of one's self and maintaining respect for one's individuality, regardless of how one is misunderstood.
In practice
In a speech about individuality, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of remaining true to oneself.
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.
It's so kind of you to want to visit me in my loneliness. - The Wicked Witch of the West. Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking. - The Tin Woodsman Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
Awareness is that state of mind which takes in everything-the crows flying across the sky, the flowers on the trees, the people sitting in front, the colors they are wearing - being extensively aware, which needs watching, observing, taking in the shape of the leaf, the shape of the trunk, the shape of the head of another, what he is doing.
While one might laugh at the meaningless boredom of people a decade or two ago, the emptiness has for many now moved from the state of boredom to a state of futility and despair, which holds promise of dangers.
The world leans on us. When we sag, the whole world seems to droop.
The savants will write excellent volumes. There will be laureates. But wars will continue just the same until the forces of the circumstances render them impossible.
The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).
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