Two nights ago, I couldn’t fall asleep until 4 or 5 in the morning, even though I was feeling really tired, because I couldn’t stop thinking about my future and the magnitude of the decisions I will be making. What do I want to do after graduation? Where do I want to be? What do I want to prioritize?
One of my residents had lent me Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet earlier this quarter, but I never got around to reading it and gave it back to him. I felt like I had to be in the right mood and headspace to truly appreciate it and absorb Rilke’s words. The way that all my 고민 filled up and replaced the hours I should have spent sleeping two nights ago told me that this would be the time for me to finally read it.
Below are some passages that I want to remember.
“No one can advise or help you — no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart […] This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity
[...]
go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer. just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside
[…]
But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn’t write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.”
Sometimes I wish there was someone or something I could ask, “what should I do?” and get the ultimate answer from. I can talk to and ask friends, family, mentors, etc. about my life decisions but like Rilke says, ultimately I am the only one who can and will answer my own questions.
Although I don’t consider myself a writer, an artist, or anyone with some creative calling, what Rilke writes about writing/being an artist still resonated with me — I feel ‘called’ toward public service.
“Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them. — Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights.
[…]
Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come.”
I can see why Andrew Garfield liked this book. The YouTuber Jack Edwards said something similar, I think, in his video where he read the books that Andrew Garfield recommended. I thought for a moment about whether it’s embarrassing/if I’d look back and feel embarrassed about me reading books based on Andrew’s recommendations but I guess the fact that there is a popular video on it means many other people are also interested in what Andrew reads?? lol idk I just find it fascinating to think and learn about what inspires people — particularly artists — and Andrew Garfield comes off as someone who thinks a lot about his craft, is well-read, and also thinks a lot about life, spirituality, relationships, etc.
“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.”
Exactly what I needed to hear!!! If this copy were mine I would have highlighted and underlined this whole passage. This copy from Green actually had a lot of underlining, but this passage wasn’t — interesting how different passages leave different impressions on different people. Rilke then talks about sex being difficult but how “everything serious is difficult; and everything is serious” — not a transition I expected lol
“Think, dear Sir, of the world that you carry inside you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own — only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it, and not lose too much time or too much courage in clarifying your attitude toward people.”
“Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent — ?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person…”
“Whoever looks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path been perceived; and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, there is no general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered.”
One Goodreads review described Rilke’s voice as “soothing, gentle, unimposing yet wise” — I completely agree, and I’d also add, ‘humble,’ and ‘loving.’
This was exactly what I needed to read. His words are not going to make me stop thinking about all my different options/future possibilities, but they will hopefully encourage me to trust myself and my own feeling, have patience with everything unresolved in my heart, love the questions themselves, and live the questions and have faith that I will gradually live my way into the answer.
—
also makes sense that bell hooks loved this book — “loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful.”
