be present

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Wow. Rainer Marie Rilke wrote that.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. Don't search for answers -- you would not be able to live them. Live the questions. Live everything. And gradually, live your way into the answer.

This is hard advice to take when we want things done, resolved, understood. We want to check something off our list. Fourth of July -- Done! Mortgage paid off -- done! Sickness, illness, fatigue cured and gone -- done! Race run, proposal submitted, apology made. Done, done, and done.

When something is done, you think it's over. But as long as you live, life has a way of coming back at you, over and over again. When you've finished one thing, something new comes along. Oh! So now I have this to get done.

We're never done. As long as we're alive, we're not done. One thing does get done, but then the next thing and the next thing and the next need doing. James Taylor wrote that "the secret to life is enjoying the passage of time." I've always thought that was right. The secret to that is understanding that we are on a journey that moves in many directions at the same time as it moves in one direction inexorably. When that journey ends, we really are done, at least in the manner of our earthly tasks.

So while you are here and alive, live everything. Enjoy every moment, the joyful ones and the sorrowful ones. Don't fret about figuring things out right now. Don't think that once you do figure it out, you're done.

Be patient. Be present. Do that and you will, indeed, live your way into the answers. 

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7/6/2026