Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. 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.

I beg you, 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.

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
...live in the question.

The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and learn to love the questions themselves.

Rilke advised, “with all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given, for you wouldn’t be able to live with them, and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along someday into the answers.

Perhaps real wisdom lies in not seeking answers at all. Any answer we find will not be true for long. An answer is a place where we can fall asleep as life moves past us to its next question. After all these years I have begun to wonder if the secret of living well is not in having all the answers but in pursuing unanswerable questions in good company.

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

You never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked.

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out - perhaps a little at a time.'
And how long is that going to take?'
I don't know. As long as you live, perhaps.'
That could be a long time.'
I will tell you a further mystery,' he said. 'It may take longer.

Don't try to understand life. Live it! Don't try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know - and all that knowing will come out of your experiencing. The more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known.

We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified — how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don't know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know.

Hold the question in your mind, but lightly, like it was something alive.

So take a breath and find what is unsolved in your heart.
Breathe in patience, breathe in love.
Love yourself bountiful.
And send that love out to others.
When you send love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people.
This love is the deepest power of prayer.

It’s important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor.