I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a deep sense of loss not just for childhood, but for the transient nature of all experiences in life.
Fernando Pessoa's quote speaks to the universal experience of loss and the yearning for the past. It suggests that mourning goes beyond just the loss of childhood; it encompasses the realization that all moments in life are ephemeral and inevitably fade away. This contemplation invites reflection on the nature of memory, nostalgia, and the passage of time, highlighting the beauty and fragility of human experiences.
In practice
During a speech about the importance of cherishing memories.
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.
To be born means being compelled to choose an era, a place, a life. To exist here, now, means to lost the possibility of being countless other potential selves.. Yet once being born there is no turning back. And I think that's exactly why the fantasy worlds of cartoon movies so strongly represent our hopes and yearnings. They illustrate a world of lost possibilities for us.
REALITY, n. The dream of a mad philosopher. That which would remain in the cupel if one should assay a phantom. The nucleus of a vacuum.
A great civilization is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. The essential causes of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.
Whatever can die is beautiful β more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?
There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing.
A Soul Knowing: You are the sum total of the Body, Mind, and Soul, and each of these aspects of you has a purpose and a function, but only one has an agenda: the Soul.
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