"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart."
“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms
and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers.
They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.
It is a question of experiencing everything.
At present you need to live the question.
Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it,
find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in my mind?
I’m not very patient.
Despite loving the slow movement and interviewing Carl Honoré, the so-called ‘Godfather of Slow’ numerous times, despite writing about the benefits of going slow for 30 years, despite moving on to a canal boat and trying to enjoy a gentle waterways pace and slower flow, I still find my mind racing and my pace brisk.
I don’t want to have patience with everything that remains unresolved.
I want to resolve it.
I don’t want to wait for the answer.
I want to know now.
That’s been my approach for a very long time.
But it doesn’t bring me peace. It doesn’t feel good.
I feel addicted in some way - to getting stuff done, to the next dopamine hit, to being in control.
I ask a question so I can discover the answer.
The idea of ‘loving the question’ and not looking for the answer? It does not compute.
But I love this Rilke quote because it challenges me to try something different.
Oprah, as ever, leads from the front and take it one step further. She asks the question and then lives the answer.
“What has made me successful is the ability to surrender my plans, dreams, and goals to a power that's greater than other people and greater than myself. Before making any major moves, I first ask: "What would you have me do? Who would you have me be. And then I try to live the answer,” she says.
Today - what questions do you want to roll round your mouth and mind?
Today - what question do you need to live right now?
This is so interesting given my impatience and always wanting to know, now I have a question - what if you don’t even question and just go immediately to the intuitive answer and living it? That feels to be where I am now, not questioning, daring to do it, and living with the answer? Food for thought….❤️
I have two stepdaughters who have cancelled my husband and myself. They refused to explain or give a reason and shut our my kids as well. After therapy to work through the anger, I've come to understand God has a reason for this, and I may never know the why here. It has been three years. Thank you for this post and the quote. It resonated.