Wise words from a great poet

A few days ago, I encountered on the same day from two different sources the same quotation. It's a quotation I had read before in one of my cousin's favorite books, Letters to a Young Poet by Ranier Maria Rilke. I haven't gotten around to getting a copy for myself but I resolve to do so before the year is out. The said quotation came in the wake of my personal ruminations on certain questions about life and love. They might have been coincidences but I'm more inclined to believe that the quotation was given as a gentle reminder to me by God -- that to not know the answer to some of life's questions is not such a tragedy. The quote is as follows:

"You are so young, so much before all beginning, and 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. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that - but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself, and don't hate anything."

When I was searching the net for the exact quotation, I came across a website dedicated to that very book. You may wish to check it out one time. Each sentence I believe is worth pondering especially during cold, rainy days when thinking and pondering seems appropriate. On a side note, only when I read the entire letter 4 did I discover that the topic that was under discussion in that missive was sex. Rilke has a very beautiful way of discussing it -- restoring to it the dignity that is sadly lacking in most discussions on the topic nowadays.

So if you have a cold, rainy day with nothing much to do (that would be quite rare for most of us), check out the site and learn to live the questions in your own life. Isn't it great to be alive?

Letters to a Young Poet