July 10

PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 10: “You are so young; you stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to 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

I love the writings of this man! They are so full of beauty and love and truth. Beautifully written, all of them.

It is frustrating to be told to wait…for any of us…for anything. When we are young, we are impatient because we have had no experience yet of life to teach us the benefits of time investment. This is a function of immaturity and is quite often an earmark of addiction.

Because we are so immature and stuck at the level of development of a 2-year-old, we question “why?” about everything. Life is a giant puzzle to us, and we want the questions NOW. We are demanding and childish and petulant. Two-years old.

When we have a 2-year-old child to deal with, we teach them discipline of waiting. Of sitting still. Of allowing LIFE to take place in its own time and ways. The unfolding is the miraculous form life gives us. We just do not get that. It is a sign of maturity and discipline and understanding that we have to get over time. There is no way to understand before we understand.

As Mr. Rilke states so beautifully, “…you need to live the question.” My experience has taught me that I know the answers 5-6 years after they are asked. Disappointing for those who think they should know NOW, but those kinds of expectations are why we are often disappointed anyway. Growth is to stop demanding life give you what you think is due you and get on with living the question and what life IS giving you right now. Show up, pay attention, and live the moments. In 5-6 years, you WILL be astonished at the answers you get. Or maybe at the new questions…