Living the Answer

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue…the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now…live along some distant day into the answer.”

I knew Rainer Maria Rilke’s quote would be the doorway into this blog post when a friend quoted ”…try to love the questions themselves…” with a look of half-baked acceptance on her face. Four days later, another friend spoke with the same uncertainty about taking a “next” step. Friend number two used the words “...coming out of the abyss.”

Both are moving ahead with plans despite unsettled feelings infused with confusion, apathy, hesitancy, and a sort of “devil may care” attitude. Heard beneath their words is the universal conundrum of not knowing, and underneath that, chaos, two of the most uncomfortable—and thus potentially—hugely transformative states of being we stumble over as humans. Our conversations reminded me of something I wrote not long ago—that to come out the other side is to emerge wiser, stronger, more intact, more humane.

This knowing holds me up through all sorts of turbulence. What sustains you through times of uncertainty and chaotic change?