The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin
I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don't dig for answers that can't be given you yet: you live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer.
Worpswede, July 16, 1903
Letters to a Young Poet
Ah, this is my all time favorite Rilke quote.
ReplyDeleteI came across it years ago as a college student, printed it (old school, you know, before cel phones, etc), and put it in my wallet. Since then, I've reprinted it numerous times but still carry it with me. I quote it to friends as advice from time to time, and try to live it, every day, into the answers.
Such a succinct and beautiful encapsulation of what may be the mother lode of Rilke's philosophical gold mine ... live the questions. And so much turns on that preposition into, does it not? Live the questions now in the hope that one day, perhaps, we may "gradually, without noticing, live into the answer".
ReplyDeleteAs I suspect is the case for many Rilke fans, this is my favorite passage from Rilke's writings. Its wisdom is both ancient and deep, and it resonates more with me now than when I first read it many years ago. To some extent, I feel that I have lived the questions into partial answers. For the most part, however, I have come to believe that the patience Rilke advocates must be a lifetime's discipline because many of our deepest, unresolved questions are likely to remain unresolved at the end of the day.
ReplyDeleteAn important word in this quote is 'perhaps'. As George suggests, there is no guarantee that by 'living the questions' we will find the answers. Rilke adds the proviso 'perhaps'...
ReplyDeleteIn a strange way I find this comforting. The quest for answers and meaning can be exhausting and distracting. We need to 'live everything', including the questions and the not knowing. 'Digging for answers' thrusts our vision into the future and we miss the present moment with all of its messy, exciting, beautiful lack of resolution.
i have always loved that quote - it is one of my very favorite. it reminds me not to get so caught up in the search that i overlook the moment and the now.
ReplyDeleteThis one lives in my heart like an ancient mantra..
ReplyDeleteBeyond this primer of Rilke (for me too), I also take it for all things. Live the ___________ (fill in the blank). If I am lonely, Live the loneliness now. If I am sad, Live sadness. This is also an Osho concept and one that transformed my thinking/feeling a few years ago. If you say, when you are sad, I am Sadness, there is something freeing, uplifting and utterly non-resistant about it. It's strange how accepting sadness, or anything, makes it less painful . . . and not so sad. I am questions.
ReplyDeleteThat quote from Rilke, and the wonderful comments on them, cheered me on a rather dull and miserable day. You are quite right - accepting the pain, the sadness, the everything, and living it - is a liberating process. (Very much in tune with Buddhist thought once more.) It's a miracle really how this conscious act of non-resistance is stronger, more positive and more effective than resistance - and it goes part-way to answering the questions. Perhaps.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny, I always thought the older I got, the less questions I would have. But the opposite has happened. The "wiser" and more aware of the world and all of it's nuances, the more I find I don't have the answers. I guess that is where faith comes in...
ReplyDeleteWe have become wise
ReplyDeletewhen we finally realize:
Answers eventually melt into questions.
I like the notion that Dan cites here of answers melting into questions, not in the sense of that common aging experience in which we find that our old certainties seem to wither and fade, but in the sense that all answers do nothing more than beg new and better questions. Even science, which is so often misperceived (in my opinion) as searching for ultimate and absolute answers, really amounts to an endless search for more sophisticated questions, to a delight in mystery, not some self-imposed need to vanquish it. There are no answers, just wiser questions. The corollary to 'live the questions' is 'love the questions'.
ReplyDeleteAs for the nature of the questions we each ask, that which is "unresolved in our hearts", as Rilke puts it, those inner queries must and do vary from individual to individual. They will not lead to acceptance and non-resistance in every one. Burning questions and their headlong pursuit, in the stimulating knowledge that no pat answers are to be had, can also fire the engines of defiance and resistance.
Lorenzo, it's interesting you brought up science because I edited out mentioning science from my comment, with misgivings about leaving it unsaid. You brought it up for me——thanks.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth considering that questions and answers are two forms of the same thing (thought), just as water and ice are two forms of H2O.
Indeed, Lorenzo. Resistance. Non-resistance. Melting into the questions is a form of non-resistance (ie openness?) Resistance is so necessary in our worldly affairs (eg Pearl Square). And 'passive', non-violent resistance is important (eg Gandhi). Ultimately, in our spiritual lives, non-resistance and openness to the flip side of perfection - leads, paradoxically, to a strong resilience ...
ReplyDeletewonderful
ReplyDeleteone of my all time favorite quotes!
ReplyDelete