HOPE MONTH: DAY 13:
“Let everything happen to you.
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
I read this quote yesterday in a completely different context. And I loved it. A new piece for me. I have books of poetry by Rilke, but do not remember reading this particular passage. I love that it jumped out at me like it did.
Of course we want life to happen…all of it…no matter what it might look like to Ego and judgment. I know I have always had this daring spirit. I learned to allow it to take me where it would at a pretty young age. I imagine this is a product of the crazy things I experienced early in life. Some of them could be called terrible, but I choose to see them as gifts that trained me to withstand whatever came along. I know there is psychic damage, I have lived with it for a lifetime. However, it was what came into my life long before I knew how to choose for myself.
So, I see that this is the path I was here to walk. I am no longer angry or resentful because I have had tremendous gifts from these experiences. AND, the real beauty comes from knowing that these events shaped me into a truly courageous, hopeful and strong woman. Fiercely independent and willing to go on hoping no matter what is happening to me.
I have always kept going. Perhaps not in the most delicate or pretty fashion, but kept going no matter what. “Till the wheels fall off” as my husband and I used to say. That was our motto…that and “It’s a good day to die.”
Both of these may sound fatalistic, but I see them as being the ultimate in optimism. Knowing that if we keep going there it will all be well. As the poem above states. No feeling is final. Most of the most terrible times in my life have had the greatest learning and powerful energy in them. The greatest of all gifts have come wrapped in some uncomfortable paper. I love that…judgment is useless because none of us is qualified to judge. I certainly never see the beauty in the terror; they look the same to me. Isn’t that amazing and beautiful? I think so!
Dolphin Hug 