Live the Questions

During a recent trip to Snowdonia, Wales, I brought with me a little book ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ by Rainer Maria Rilke. I have come across Rilke’s poems before so I decided to pick up this Penguin Classic to accompany me on my trip. During the day I was fully immersed in the vastness of nature, the mountainous landscape, beautiful lake, dramatic waterfalls… At night by the fire Rilke’s words touched my heart. It felt like he was speaking to the very depth of my soul.

You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I would like to ask you, as best I can, dear Sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distance day in the future.

What goes on in your innermost being is worth all your love.