Live the questions
What does this guidance from the poet Rilke really mean?
The great Rainer Maria Rilke in the life-time must read book Letters to a Young Poet offers this antidote to uncertainty:
“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. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rilke was a poet, not a musical composer, but when I think about his guidance to “live the questions” I picture him as a conductor of a great symphony. Thanks to AI you can see this image too.
I read this book back in 2019 per the recommendation of a good friend and thought it was magnificent yet only recently did my understanding of this guidance mature to a point where it became clear and practical. Is Rilke asking us to (quoting the tik tok generation) to “fuck around and find out”? Maybe.
Life can be challenging
Life has a tremendous amount of uncertainty. It is hard to know where to live, where to work, what to belief, who to love and more.
Rilke’s guidance is an invitation to have a bias towards action, to experience contrast, to try, fail, learn and try again, to have appreciation for the process that is unfolding. If you aren’t sure the answer, take action and learn. Some supporting examples come to mind:
Famous music producer Rick Rubin talks about “pulling a thread” which means starting with a small idea and following it to see where it goes.
In the startup world there is a mantra “action is oxygen”.
Best Selling Author and former Tuesdays with Morrisey guest Daniel Pink shared on one of his old “Pink Cast” 2 minute episodes a concept called interrogative self talk which shows that questions inspire more confidence and clarity than affirmations.
The late philosopher Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks would commonly say “faith is not certainty; have the courage to live with uncertainty".
Taking small steps in light of uncertainty is one of our most special human opportunities. What are you are wrestling with? Lean in. Live the questions.