SS_10/14 → Notes from Conversas Vadias #10 – Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Herman José
Notes from Conversas Vadias #10
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Herman José
Originally broadcast by RTP on 10 May 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.
Some of the deepest philosophical ideas arrive disguised as jokes.
This conversation is full of them.
Halfway through the interview, Agostinho says something that sounds almost playful.
A cat fulfils being a cat.
See if you can fulfil being yourself.
It’s such a simple image that it’s easy to overlook.
Animals don’t spend their lives trying to become other animals.
A bird doesn’t aspire to be a lion.
A tree doesn’t compare itself with another tree.
Only humans seem capable of spending an entire lifetime trying to become someone else.
Perhaps that’s why another idea appears repeatedly throughout the conversation.
Agostinho resists definitions.
Not because words are useless.
But because definitions have a habit of freezing living things.
The moment we believe we’ve fully explained something…
…we’ve probably stopped seeing it.
Reality is always larger than our descriptions of it.
That feels especially relevant today.
We have labels for everything.
Personalities.
Political identities.
Psychological profiles.
Algorithms categorise us before we’ve finished becoming ourselves.
Yet life keeps escaping every box we build for it.
Later, Agostinho says something that initially sounds unrelated.
We are born for free…
and spend the rest of our lives trying to earn it.
I had to stop for a moment.
Because he isn’t talking about money.
He’s talking about existence.
We arrive in the world without having achieved anything.
Without proving anything.
Without deserving anything.
And then, almost immediately, we begin behaving as if our right to exist depends on performance.
Grades.
Careers.
Recognition.
Status.
Success.
Perhaps we’ve confused value with worthiness.
Towards the end of the conversation, Agostinho returns to children.
As he so often does.
He says that true genius is simply the child who remained a child until the end.
Not childish.
Childlike.
Curious.
Spontaneous.
Open.
Still capable of wonder.
Maybe growing older was never supposed to mean becoming less alive.
Maybe maturity isn’t the disappearance of the child.
It’s protecting that child from everything that tries to convince them to become someone else.
Perhaps fulfilling ourselves isn’t about becoming extraordinary.
It’s about removing everything that prevented us from being who we already were.
Original source
Conversas Vadias — Episode 10 → https://www.fernandomoreira.me/conversas-vadias-episodio-10-com-herman-jose/
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Herman José.
Broadcast by RTP on 10 May 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.