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. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Rilke (1903)
A couple years ago as I was reading Rilke, I found this quote, wrote it on my mirror, and thought about it everyday for several months.
I realized that I like to plan things. I like to-do lists. I like getting things done, completing tasks, and figuring out what the next steps are in life.
But after thinking about this quote I realized sometimes there are questions in life that I cannot solve right away, somethings I cannot plan or add to a list. There are locked rooms in the castle and indecipherable messages scribbled in aging books. Somethings I am not meant to understand and make plans for the future at this point in my life.
Being in Chile is a process of opening some doors and finding other rooms locked. I now know that I am not always ready for the answers and also that I find within myself endless questions. I have found some answers but, more importantly for me, I am learning to live the questions and embrace what is unsolvable within me.
Sometimes the process of living the questions is frustrating. Sometimes I just want the answers. I beat my head against locked doors. I read and re-read messages that I cannot interpret. The last couple years have been teaching me to be patient, to live the questions without stressing about finding the answers.
I am learning to live everything, in every moment of the journey: the questions and the answers, the locked doors and the opened passages, the foreign tongues and the familiar stories. They are all part of the journey. Questions are always present, I can fret about them or love them. In Chile, I am reminded daily that I need to live the questions now.
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