30 Jan My mania for creating a false world is still with me (FERNANDO PESSOA)
That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence.
The only thing I’ve ever really cared about is my inner life.
My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer.
I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be.
Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness. I only ever desired what was beyond my imaginings.
All I ever asked of life was that it should pass me by without my even noticing it. Of love I demanded only that it never be anything more than a distant dream. In my own inner landscapes, all of them unreal, I’ve always been attracted to what’s in the distance, and how the hazy aqueducts – almost out of sight in my dreamed landscapes – had a dreamy sweetness in relation to the rest of the landscape, a sweetness that enabled me to love them.
My mania for creating a false world is still with me and will leave me only when I die.
The Book of Disquiet
Fernando Pessoa
