live the questions

“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.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

In searching for a different quote, I stumbled back on this one. I have so many questions right now about aging, friendships, taking on responsibility, career. It reminds me of the quote around not creating goals for your life but looking for ways of living: “Be a caring, present, and reliable friend” vs “Have 10 best friends”. Goals have never made sense to me. They feel too limited.

This makes me think of questions to ask another: what question have you lived your way into an answer around? What questions are you grappling with today? What would change if you got an answer to a question that’s occupied a part of your soul? What answers are people waiting on you for? I’ve spent ample time in pursuit of big answers, like wondering what parts of me are torn from my birth mom and what perspectives sleeping in endless different beds might give me. What does it mean to forgive someone? What do we need to forgive vs embrace as something to accept about another? I’m still living my way into them.

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