2021-08-09

Today I’m going to read one more paragraph from Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to A Young Poet.

You are so young, all still lies ahead of you, and I should like to ask you ,as best as I can, dear sir, to be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. and what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.

I’m sure Rilke also craved answers when he was younger. It doesn’t mean as we become older we grow out of questions. We just get used to the fact that no one lives completely free of confusion and questions are a natural part of life. Leave the questions to life, and life will crack it for you when the time comes.

It reminds me of all the questions that kept me unsettled throughout my college years and early career. What if I fail an exam? Shall I find a job after graduation? What kind of job fits me? And when can I expect a pay raise? I looked for answers, and of course answers didn’t come to me until a point when I suddenly found the questions all gone. Then of course new questions emerged, and the process repeated itself.

I’ve learned to have questions as company, acknowledging their existence and seeking no immediate answer. The world is not perfect, and I don’t crave for it to be perfect. I live my questions for now, and I live my way into the answer.