Prisons and Shackles

 To submit to nothing, whether to a man or a love or an idea, and to have the aloof independence of not believing in the truth or even (if it existed) in the usefulness of knowing it - this seems to me the right attitude for the intellectual inner life of those who can't live without thinking. To belong is synonymous with banality. Creeds, ideals, a woman, a profession - all are prisons and shackles. To be is to be free. Even ambition, if we take pride in it, is a hindrance; we wouldn't be proud of it if we realized it's a string by which we're pulled. No: no ties even to ourselves! Free from ourselves as well as from others, contemplatives with ecstasy, thinkers without conclusions, and liberated from God, we will live the few moments of bliss allowed us in the prison yard by the distraction of our executioners.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 336

"To belong is synonymous with banality." I've talked about how when I first picked up The Book of Disquiet I simply didn't understand it, and I needed a little context to gain a foothold - and then I fell in love with it. What I began to realize about Pessoa is that it's not simply that he was a contrarian or a Goth before they had been recreated as an American cultural niche or just a very conscious weirdo, but rather that he was a person with a very tender soul, who was hoping to live a life that didn't cause pain; it was, I would argue, less about accomplishing something, but rather trying to limit emotional bruising. It's the literary equivalent of Neil Young's A Man Needs a Maid, a song that I think is also equally misunderstood.