…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, from Letters to a Young Poet
In moments of feeling overwhelmed by uncertainty, defeat, or depletion, I list my unanswered questions. It is a simple exercise because the questions typically flow so readily. “Why did this happen?” “Is there something wrong with me?” “Will I ever feel hope again?”
The first time I did it, I almost wished it wasn’t so immediately impactful. I had been exhausting myself trying to figure things out and was shocked that such a simple exercise could eclipse my efforts. I felt as though the list had swallowed the burden I felt, as if Rilke had given me permission to be exactly where I was.
Some questions need more time, more context, or a different vantage point before they can be understood. The list gave them somewhere to wait.
…prayers
“More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
Attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila
It used to be hard for me to let go of a failed plan or vision for my life. I often treated an outcome as evidence about me, rather than information about the plan, the conditions around it, or what I might want next.
I encountered this quote (via a friend, via Truman Capote) during a particularly sharp period of transition, and it gave me another way to look at disappointment.
I titled a page “unanswered prayers” and began listing hopes, dreams, efforts, wishes, goals, and visions that had not materialized as I had imagined.
The list was uncomfortable, but it also revealed a pattern: how often I had escaped ill-fitting designs for my life; how often disappointment had opened into something unexpected; and how over time, contrast and change had given my life a shape that was deeply my own.