Vocation Demands Regular Affirmations

Thanks to Fernando Pessoa, I have traveled paths I never imagined. I am moving forward over repulsions, over fears, over lack of interest, and I find myself oscillating between indifference and curiosity. An intellectual curiosity, it is true. And then? Then possibilities opened up for me, so to speak, and the intellectual horizon of the poet proved to be wider than I thought. A vocation demands regular and variegated affirmations, it has to strengthen itself through diverse elements of reality, that is, it has to affirm itself by them, absorbing them into itself. And it seems to me that Pessoa’s unusual paths contributed greatly to his becoming what he is—in other words, to his achieving a very rare degree of affirmation.