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.
No system of regulation can safely be substituted for the operation of individual liberty as expressed in competition.
If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.
I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help and patience, and a certain difficult repentance long difficult repentance, realization of lifeβs mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.
... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.
The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is Are clamorous goans, which strike upon my heart, Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans Show minutes, times, and hours.
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