The Blooming of Reality

If only I were, I feel in this moment, someone who could see all this as if he had no relation to it except seeing it — contemplate all of it as if he were the only adult traveler who had today reached the surface of life! If only I hadn’t learned, from birth onward, to give accepted meanings to these things, if only I could see them in the expression they have separate from the expression that has been imposed upon them. If only I could understand the human reality in the woman selling fish independent of her being a fishmonger and know that she exists and sells. If only I could see the policeman the way God sees him. If only I could notice everything for the first time, not apocalyptically, like the revelation of the Mystery, but directly, like the blooming of reality.

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, 1914–1934