Unlived Things

No one lives his life.
Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,
we come of age as masks.
Our true face never speaks
Somewhere there must be storehouses
Where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.
All paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.

–Rainer Maria Rilke*


*As quoted at Empire Remixed