Today’s THESE WORDS CHANGED ME come from Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke, whose name I always butcher when I say it out loud.
“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.”
The line that calls out to me: Live the questions now.
Not later.
How are you living the questions now? What are you not doing or saying NOW? How will you fix it tomorrow?
What words changed you?
Brad Wetzler is the author of Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing (Hachette Go) and Real Mosquitoes Don’t Eat Meat (W.W. Norton). A former senior editor at Outside, he is a memoir writing coach, podcaster, and yoga teacher. He writes books and pens the Enlightened-ish newsletter on Substack.com. He also hosts Enlightened-ish Podcast about adventure, healing, emotional wellness, faith, and spirituality. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.