There's something vile (and all the more vile because ridiculous) in the tendency of feeble men to make universal tragedies out of the sad comedies of their private woes.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the tendency of weak individuals to exaggerate their personal struggles into grand tragedies.
Fernando Pessoa highlights the absurdity in how some people magnify their personal difficulties, transforming minor setbacks into significant tragedies. This behavior not only reflects their weakness but also misrepresents the genuine nature of life's struggles, turning personal misfortunes into exaggerated narratives that cloud their understanding of reality.
In practice
During a support group, one might quote this to remind individuals to not let their personal struggles overwhelm them.
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.
If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.
In thy face I see the map of honour, truth and loyalty.
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
The psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.
When men search for God with their bodily eyes they find Him nowhere, for He is invisible. But for those who ponder in the Spirit He is present everywhere. He is in all, yet beyond all.
In this world, there must be a certain degree of honor just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honor, there will always be some others who bear in themselves the honor of many men.
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