“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…”

“Be curious” is the advice that I am hearing nearly every day. It’s coming from a wide range of sources:  Judson Brewer (in Unwinding Anxiety), Ollie Dreon (in his blog for college instructors), Kristin Neff (in Self-Compassion), and Ted Lasso (a TV series). In 1903, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote letters to a young poet in which he recommended being curious and accepting. Instead of searching for the answers, “live the questions now” and “take whatever comes, with great trust . . . and don’t hate anything.” This requires that you “love your solitude.” This advice predates the Mindfulness movement by about a century.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. Vintage Books, 1986, p. 34.

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