He decided to become hard in this thirty-eighth year. Change, he told himself, change. In the days when his whole nature had an infinite longing to love, he had realized, painfully, that he would never find the object of his love as long as he stayed receptive and yielding to those who thought they loved him. These faces crowding in on him like open books blocked his view of the shy, lowered face of his unknown beloved. His vague idea of her features was extinguished by the clarity of the faces of those who had come to love him. He lost his way. He stood on a street corner and no longer knew her. He waited, and no longer knew her. He could no longer dream: his whole future had come to an end.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, from In His Thirty-Eighth Year
Picture from Breathless
