Rainer Maria Rilke - Live the Questions Now
"...I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
I've been thinking about these words of poet Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet for some time now. Specifically, I've been thinking about "Living the questions" and how it relates to where I find myself in my life at the moment.
When I pause in acknowledgement of where I find myself, I stand in awe of what it's taken to get here. I feel so incredibly overwhelmed and cleansed in gratitude not only for the trials and blessings along the journey but for gratitude itself. One of my daily rituals is that I write in my gratitude journal. It's helps me to stay grateful for the incredibly BIG and abundant life I live that is just so incredibly full. It helps me to be much more aware of the mundane and ordinary blessings that are equally huge and meaningful in my day to day life.
Just like meditating or anything else, dedication becomes habit-forming. I'm starting to actually look for the things to be grateful for now. And everything "counts".
In this gratitude and in my quiet, continuous and daily "Thank You!" to the Universe, what I ponder most from my desire to be grateful are Rainer Maria Rilke's words about not searching for the answer but living the question itself. I've come across this quote so many times in my life but only recently did it really click for me. Only recently did the question, living it, turn into an action.
Just like meditating or anything else, dedication becomes habit-forming. I'm starting to actually look for the things to be grateful for now. And everything "counts".
In this gratitude and in my quiet, continuous and daily "Thank You!" to the Universe, what I ponder most from my desire to be grateful are Rainer Maria Rilke's words about not searching for the answer but living the question itself. I've come across this quote so many times in my life but only recently did it really click for me. Only recently did the question, living it, turn into an action.
"How can I show them that I love them, today?"
Just having this question floating around in my consciousness has changed my way of being.
My purpose today is to be a teacher of love to my family. It's the single most important thing in my life right now and my prayer is that through living my question, consciously, I can answer it through action on a daily basis beginning with the two people who matter the most in my Universe.
What question are you living?
