Living into the Questions
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
I recently heard that January is not a time to start new habits. This struck a chord with me. January is a lot of things–maybe quiet on the surface, as we are re-energizing and slowly emerging from hibernation. It might also be a time of grief–acknowledging the losses of the previous year, that we were tempted to gloss over in the forced merriment of the holidays (or sugar-induced coma). It might be a time of purging, or de-cluttering, to make room for the values we espouse. And really, we might be sitting with a lot of unanswered questions. From existential (who am I? what really matters?) to the seemingly mundane (what practices do I want to cultivate? who do I want to eat with?), with the bridge between anchored in the simmering visions and ephemeral hopes we’ve been holding for so long.
Perhaps that’s why Rilke’s quote has spoken to me for so many years, and why it continues to do so. Because while I’m always asking questions and seeking answers (maybe it’s because I’ve always been a good student), I am finding more and more that the joy is in living the questions. There is a certain liberation and vulnerability in letting loose the tight confines of what I “should” do and opening myself up to the possibilities of an unknown future. Because perhaps you’ll find a version of yourself then that you can only begin to imagine now. And wouldn’t that be a reason to wake up curious in the morning?
May you find a vibrant, life-giving energy as you live into the questions.
