A friend recently reminded me of this quote, which in some ways is the genesis for this blog. I'm not sure I'm comfortable (yet?) with the idea of the someday-answer, but the description of process resonates with me (and not just because it uses the image of books!).
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
Letters to a Young Poet
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The questions that occupy my heart (dare I say soul) haunt me like a foreign language. I appreciate this post so much. The quote is quite moving for there is a performance to living the questions. This is something I'm trying to achieve. Thanks for this post!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the discomfort with the distant day answer is? I love the idea of living into answers without even noticing--seems to sustain the posture of potential and possibility. great quote!
ReplyDeleteI think I'm a bit resistant to the distant day answer because I've seen how that sort of response can be used as (what I would call) a problematic eschatological vision. Like, don't worry now, because someday you'll get all the answers. Which to me feels too close to: don't question now, don't struggle now, because it will all work out in the end. You see where I'm a bit suspicious (or jaded) there. I'm re-reading Rilke, and it's hard to tell which he means when the quote is in its full context. But the image of "experiencing" the answer (or living into it) holds some of the sense of process and openness and possibility -- and even of performance, as robyn notes -- that I find valuable. I also love the image of surprise. So that's what I'm thinking when I say I'm not comfortable/yet -- not dismissing it, but a bit tentative as I recognize the dangers (at least for me) of holding too tightly to the vision of future answers.
ReplyDeletei'm working on a couple of papers: one on syncopation and the other on improvisation. both elements seem to use the element of surprise to make sense of rhythm. it is interesting then to think about living into questions and/or answers as a type of rhythm or rhythmic performance. there is potential and possibility in the rhythm to become more than what it is, like the self or body has potentiality or possibility. the quote is GREAT!
ReplyDeleteone of my favorites and i always appreciate seeing it again...
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