You are so young, so much before all begin­ning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with every­thing unre­solved in your heart and to 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 in the future, you will grad­u­al­ly, with­out even notic­ing it, live your way into the answer.

– Let­ters to a Young Poet, The Fourth Let­ter by Rain­er Maria Rilke

 

That was a col­lage I made some­times in the sum­mer. I made it as an exam­ple to demon­strate an idea to a group, so there was­n’t much plan­ning or com­po­si­tion involved as I was mak­ing it. But I quite liked it in the end. And that’s gen­er­al­ly how I feel about mak­ing things — I’m usu­al­ly hap­pi­er with what I make if the process was intu­itive and more or less unplanned. 

So I want­ed to post this piece of col­lage today and was look­ing for a quote to go with it. Because I love quotes, and I have a num­ber of quotes book­marked from this blog, so I thought I’d share one of them today.

And I find this quote from Let­ters to a Young Poet (must read some­day) par­tic­u­lar­ly rel­e­vant to me today, because ever since I applied to return to school I’ve con­stant­ly ques­tion whether it’s a good idea. I’ve “returned” to school for a few times now, where will it lead this time? What cre­den­tial will it give me and what will it get me in today’s job market? 

As my mind is flood­ed with these ques­tions about the future I lose sight of the present, of the wealth of knowl­edge pre­sent­ed to me through the course mate­ri­als, the library that is thor­ough­ly acces­si­ble to me as a stu­dent, the instruc­tors who are bril­liant and have so much expe­ri­ence in the field. 

My “get it over with” atti­tude is mak­ing me miss out on all that learn­ing. It’s a shame. Good thing it’s only the sec­ond week of class. I can still catch up, right?

So per­haps the part of me that likes to just get things over with and dash to the fin­ish line can use some help from the part of me that is able to be intu­itive, to pro­ceed with­out a pre­cise des­ti­na­tion, and to be hap­py with being in the process.

Have a won­der­ful week­end, friends!