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.
I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.
From nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations
There is nothing little in God; His mercy is like Himself-it is infinite. You cannot measure it. His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners, after great lengths of time, and then gives great favours and great privileges, and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God.
We don't have the time to completely be ourselves. We only have the room to be happy.
Patanjali, declares that the true secret of evolution is the manifestation of the perfection which is already in every being; that this perfection has been barred and the infinite tide behind is struggling to express itself. These struggles and competitions are but the results of our ignorance, because we do not know the proper way to unlock the gate and let the water in. This infinite tide behind must express itself; it is the cause of all manifestation.
Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.
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