I do not evolve, I simply journey. - Fernando Pessoa

Original: Considero a vida uma estalagem onde tenho que me demorar até que chegue a diligência do abismo. Não sei onde ela me levará, porque não sei nada.

I belong to a generation that inherited disbelief in the Christian faith and created in itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our fathers still had the believing impulse, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were champions of social equality, others were wholly enamoured of beauty, still others had faith in science and its achievements, and there were some who became even more Christian, resorting to various Easts and Wests in search of new religious forms to entertain their otherwise hollow consciousness of merely living.

We lost all of this. We were born with none of these consolations. Each civilization follows the particular path of a religion that represents it; turning to other religions, it loses the one it had, and ultimately loses them all.

We lost the one, and all the others with it.

And so we were left, each man to himself, in the desolation of feeling ourselves live. A ship may seem to be an object whose purpose is to sail, but no, its purpose is to reach a port. We found ourselves sailing without any idea of what port we were supposed to reach. Thus we reproduced a painful version of the argonauts' adventurous precept:* living doesn't matter, only sailing does.

Calm because I'm unknown, And myself because I'm calm, I want to fill my days With wanting nothing from them.
For those whom wealth touches, Gold irritates the skin. For those on whom fame blows, Life fogs over.
On those for whom happiness Is their sun, night will fall. But those who hope for nothing Are glad for whatever comes.