There is a Portuguese word for a melancholic feeling of remembrance, of longing for someone or something that has been past, the absence of a once pleasing experience that is currently not being lived. The word is Saudade. It cannot be translated very well, and perhaps that is what makes it so dear to all of us Portuguese-speakers. The fact that it is something exclusive emphasizes the feeling of togetherness within the Portuguese-speaking community, and gives space for a discussion about all the things that provoke Saudade in someone. Saudade relates to a particular void you find within yourself – to that empty part of your heart or your soul – because you no longer have something that once gave you joy. Nostalgia might be close, but that only considers the past, it does not provoke a hollowness in you where there once was something so dear and so good.
In an editorial team meeting on the theme of the next Splijtstof issue, with much discussion, and the permanent, ever-agonizing feeling of Saudade in the back of my mind, the editor-in-chief, Sophie, challenged me to write a piece on this feeling exactly. I was asked to think about writing on the concept of living abroad, studying philosophy, and battling many different emotions, all with one end: to follow my hopes and my dreams. How can Saudade relate to the future and how can the present accommodate such a feeling of emptiness? The feeling of pursuing a goal is something so thrilling and yet so terrifying. It is part of pursuing your own hopes and dreams and therefore Saudade should always be given free rein to carry out its business.
You can have Saudade for everything, anything a person, a place, a vacation, a lost sensation, your favourite pastry, and so on. The first thing that comes to mind, for me, is my home. As a student who decided to leave my country in search of new, different, opportunities, I have to say that the feeling that takes over my body the most is the feeling of Saudade. I miss my home, my spot near the beach, my mother, my dog, the daily morning espresso with cinnamon, the traditional and not-so-crass crassness of the man working at the café. I miss speaking my own language, being able to relate on a deeper level with the people walking next to me on the street, exchanging a glance with a stranger and sighing when the line in front of us is too long, being able to express myself in a way that doesn’t require an explanation of a term as long as the one I am writing now.
The reality is that I left all of this behind. I had my own ambitions that required moving countries and studying there. This entailed starting a whole new life in a place that, quite frankly, is extremely alien from all that I had previously known. Mind you, I mean no disrespect towards the life I have now. I have found my own new reality, one which includes a 4 euro Latte Macchiato, a language barrier that makes me slightly uncomfortable – but not enough to make me leave – and an awful lot of biking. I have chosen this life. Whereas the life I had at home was the life that was given to me: a product of the hard work of my parents and the result of years of tradition in an ancient country. I didn’t really have a say in the way I lived my life. Even though I do, theoretically, have my own rationality, as an individual, independent thinker, who can choose to do things for myself, the deeper truth is that my old life was based on following a crowd, following all that had been done before me. It was based on comfort in tradition, and comfort in what had already been confirmed as efficient and productive.
The fact that one does not move in an autonomous direction but rather in a flow that is not one’s own, is a reflection of how small we are. In this world, with one minor decision, your whole life can change. You are suddenly a small fish in the ocean, with endless possibilities, hopes, and dreams big enough to fill the entire ocean. Saudade is a way of staying in your own sea, in your own little river, a comfortable place that allows you to not make decisions for yourself, to flow with the current, and still live a relatively comfortable but slightly mediocre life. Saudade, in this sense, undermines the rationality that was so vehemently emphasized during the Enlightenment period; a rationality which many people so strongly advocate for today. This is the idea of being enlightened as a way to step out of the minority which life has set upon you. Making haste to consciously decide to grow and develop one’s own rationality, without interference, is a very Kantian Perspective of Enlightenment, one which I regard as key for anyone with a big decision on their hands.
To follow my dreams, I chose a new life. I stepped out of the bubble that for so long had coddled me and devised in me a person who loved her nationality, who loved her home, her language, her food, her ability to express the term Saudade. I have learned new things, in fact, I might have learned more from the philosophy life has taught me (by suddenly living alone in a completely different country), than from the philosophy a professor has taught me at a violently early 8:30 a.m. class about Mbembe and his necro-political philosophical theories.
Choosing to pursue an ambition is a difficult task, one which, I think, is underestimated and taken for granted in the western world. I have found that most people take moving out alone at a mere 18/19 years old to be standard, not necessarily to change countries, but to study and live alone at such a young age is seen as normal. It is a phenomenon that I believe is not discussed on the level it should be discussed. Following your dreams should not automatically entail the pain and anxiety that moving abroad does. From learning what type of olive oil to buy, to knowing that there are certain sweaters that I cannot simply throw in the washing machine, to missing my mother’s hug at the end of an endless-seeming day, none of it is easy. It is an excruciatingly painful, slightly boring, definitely confusing, and excitingly curious process. And this rollercoaster of emotions is exactly what we ought to build on.
I feel there ought to be some sort of explanation, a disclaimer about all of these emotions when making a conscious decision of following ambitions. It is important to understand that a long process of hardship, fun, emptiness, partying, loneliness, and sometimes all of them simultaneously, will await students. This was something I was not prepared for.
I was not prepared to follow my hopes and dreams and be met with despair and shocking reality. The thing that perhaps would have helped me was if there were more conversations about how following one’s dreams entails a staggering reality check, where my new truth and new reality was not always ‘dreamy’ and ‘hope-y’. The life I had chosen was the opposite of all that I had previously lived, different to all that I had known and that had known me.
I try to put these feelings, these confusions, and pains into words, to talk about them with my friends, to see if there is a way of relating them to me, but verbalizing my anxieties is never easy. And so, I am limited to writing, which is what most people turn to in times of distress. Writing, as a way to get rid of my uncertainties, takes me to poetry:
The seagulls have become crows
The sound of waves has become the sound of trees
The sand has become grass.
The time passes fast, but slow?
The sun remains the same
when it is there, that is.
But the place changed
The habits changed
The friends changed
The house is not the same
The pillow doesn’t embrace my heavy head in the same way,
Coffee has a different taste, not exactly good.
But the heart is there.
Split between two places
In a constant crossroads
Not knowing where to belong.
maybe to both, who knows.
My soul longs for something.
I am yet to discover what that is.
I don’t know if it is the feeling of having something complete…
For I feel so incomplete
and at the same time so full.
My current reality is bleak, raw, and uncertain. But one thing is for sure, choosing to pursue my hopes and dreams might not have been easy, but it is a changing process, it is an inconstant and beautiful oscillation filled with Saudade and one which is strictly necessary for my personal growth. Without the challenges that life gives you, what is your life but an extension of that which came before you? Making your own choices, following your dreams, giving in to your hopes, entails making sacrifices, but at least they are your own sacrifices. Take it as an ode to (Kantian) Enlightenment, to emancipation, to being able to make educated decisions for yourself; that, certainly, looks better on paper.