“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). … Read More
Tag: Rainer Maria Rilke
“And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rise up from the depths of time.”
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, perhaps the most dog-eared book on my shelves, doesn’t give advice on writing poetry. Instead, it’s what Einstein –his contemporary — might have written if he had been a poet. Compare the Theory of Relativity to this statement: “People have already … Read More
“The struggle is really all I have for you because it is the only portion of this world under your control.”
This 2015 winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction – “a work of rare beauty and revelatory honesty” that is “highly provocative, thoughtfully presented” — is a meditation on race as a social construct. Written as a set of letters to his young son, it raises many … Read More
“I am the rest between two notes . . . in the dark interval, reconciled, they stay there trembling.”
This poem about tension and transition is classic Rainer Marie Rilke. He explored both of these dynamics frequently in a his letters, which were published in a book titled Letters to a Young Poet. (They are among the most famous, best -loved letters in all of literature.) In them, … Read More