Rainer Maria Rilke

On more occasions than I can recall, I've read references to Rainer Maria Rilke and his "Letters to a Young Poet" by authors and artists I like. About a week ago, I found myself in a bookstore tucked away comfortably in an oversized chair reading a copy of the book. Without fail, I found a couple of exerpts that seemed to talk directly to me. I scribbled them onto a subscription card from the Mental Floss magazine I'd just perused and thought they were worthy of sharing:

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.

Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it--but take whatever comes with great trust, and if only it comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.