The Answer Growing. . .

“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.”

Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

We can love the questions whispering from the recesses of our hearts, burning in the mind. We can love them because they push us out of the deadening status quo lands of settling, settling with an “oh well, I guess this is it…” attitude about life, love and. And. Get out and know. Grow and question, even the best answers need to be questioned. And if you’re clueless, then learn to be even just a bit at ease with the unrest of it. Don’t think you’re dumb for not having the answer.

What’s “the answer” anyway? Is there such? Even when the answer and only point is love itself, that one answer still demands you make it your own unique story of love birthed from experience, from risk. The answer is your answer, the one found down the road as you transform. People want answers yesterday or now at the latest. The energy of desperation begging: “Where is this relationship going?!” Well, it’s going unless you seek a box of vows. Then it’s gone and dead. When we seek too soon to make a relationship take shape and form deep commitment because we’re afraid of loss or lack, we base our vows on fear’s inspiration, on death. And we hope for life!

The same thing is true with your relationship with yourself. You can take the personality tests and get yourself all figured out and boxed up and move along. You know what I discovered? If you want to stay alive and alert, growing perpetually, you’ll become dissatisfied with staying put in one box. Those tests are great, nurturing the work of being and growing as a process, with tests providing a snapshot glimpse of what you are at any given time. Meyers-Briggs shows me as an introvert one year and an extrovert the next. My projected likely career choices range from computer programmer to wedding planner to psychoanalyst, depending on where I am in my growth process. But there are consistencies that will never change. Details matter to me. Deep relating is a must. But the question continues to roll and beg to be found ‘round the next bend: who am I and how will I prove love as me, me as love? What’s the next creation?! This should always be so for those who want to be found growing beautifully right before the last breath.

Letters To A Young Poet gives some great clues for finding the way past the roadblocks to growth. This is one well-worn book in my home and rests first on the buffet/bookshelf in my dining room posing as the central hub of work for me: the office. It’s the pass-through room, computer central, book and piano stop where Rilke is well-loved. Then it moves to the nightstand and gets mixed up with the other copy lying around on the bookshelf. Page after page whispers out words provoking a million possibilities and my pen underlines, exclaims and writes out comments on the borders. Letters To A Young Poet speaks timelessly. There’s nothing of “current events and times” to diminish the potency of truth resting in the words and between the lines. Go buy a copy of it used and…

…love the questions. Love the possibilities and grow into the answers. It’s the best path to unity of being and unity with others, giving room for every chance and every chance for giving room…room to unfold in love.