Today’s Teacher: Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)
The Teaching
“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.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Who Was Rainer Maria Rilke?
Rainer Maria Rilke was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, considered one of the greatest lyric poets in the German language. Born in Prague to a difficult family situation—his mother dressed him as a girl to replace a deceased daughter, his father was harsh and distant—Rilke spent much of his life searching for belonging and meaning.
He lived a restless, wandering existence, moving between cities and countries, supported by patrons, never quite settling. He experienced profound loneliness, struggled with relationships, and wrestled constantly with existential questions about art, love, God, death, and the meaning of human existence.
Rather than seeing his uncertainty and questioning as problems to solve, Rilke embraced them as the very substance of a life fully lived. His poetry emerged from dwelling in uncertainty, sitting with unanswered questions, and allowing mystery to remain mysterious.
In 1903, a young aspiring poet named Franz Xaver Kappus wrote to Rilke seeking advice about whether he should become a poet. Rilke’s response became one of the most beloved and frequently quoted pieces of writing about creativity, life, and the human condition—Letters to a Young Poet.
In these letters, Rilke didn’t provide answers. Instead, he taught something more valuable: how to live with questions.
Understanding the Wisdom
The Tyranny of Needing Answers
We live in an age that demands immediate answers:
- Google gives you information in milliseconds
- Self-help promises “5 steps to fix your life”
- Society expects you to know what you want by age 18
- Dating apps require you to articulate exactly who you’re looking for
- Career paths demand you choose your destination before you begin
- Everyone asks “What’s your plan?”
The pressure is constant: Know yourself. Know what you want. Know where you’re going. Have it figured out.
Rilke says: This is backwards.
The most important questions in life cannot be answered quickly. And trying to force answers before you’re ready actually prevents you from living the questions deeply enough to discover real answers.
Questions You Cannot Answer Yet
Rilke identifies a profound truth: Some questions can only be answered by living, not by thinking.
Questions like:
- What is my purpose?
- Who am I meant to love?
- What should I dedicate my life to?
- How do I navigate this grief?
- What does it mean to live well?
- How do I become myself?
These aren’t math problems with solutions you can look up. They’re existential questions that must be lived into over time.
Why can’t you answer them now?
“Because you would not be able to live them.”
If someone handed you the complete answer to “What is your life’s purpose?” right now, you wouldn’t have the experiences, wisdom, or development to actually embody that answer. You’d have information, not understanding. Knowledge, not wisdom.
The answer only becomes real when you’ve lived your way to it.
Love the Questions Themselves
This is Rilke’s most radical suggestion: Don’t merely tolerate uncertainty—love it.
Love the questions like:
- “Locked rooms” – mysterious spaces you cannot yet enter, but that hold promise
- “Books written in a very foreign tongue” – wisdom that exists but you cannot yet comprehend
This means:
- Being curious about your confusion instead of frustrated by it
- Appreciating the mystery instead of demanding clarity
- Seeing questions as companions on the journey, not problems to eliminate
- Finding richness in not-knowing, rather than only in knowing
Most people hate their questions:
- “I hate that I don’t know what I want to do with my life”
- “It’s killing me not knowing if this relationship is right”
- “I can’t stand this uncertainty about my future”
Rilke suggests: What if you loved these questions? What if uncertainty became interesting rather than unbearable?
Live the Questions Now
This is the practice: Instead of desperately seeking answers, live with full presence in the questions themselves.
What does this mean practically?
Don’t put your life on hold waiting for clarity. Live now, within the uncertainty.
Don’t force premature answers to complex questions. Let them unfold over time.
Don’t rush past the confusion. Stay with it, explore it, let it teach you.
Pay attention to your lived experience. The answers emerge from living, not from thinking in circles.
Trust the process. You’re moving toward understanding even when it doesn’t feel like it.
“Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Not through analysis. Not through forcing. Through living.
How to Practice This Wisdom Today
1. Morning Question Inventory (10 minutes)
Start your day by acknowledging the questions you’re living with.
Write down:
What questions am I carrying right now?
- About my purpose or direction
- About relationships or love
- About career or calling
- About identity or becoming
- About meaning or spirituality
Example questions:
- “Should I leave this relationship?”
- “What is my real calling?”
- “How do I deal with this loss?”
- “Who am I becoming?”
- “What matters most?”
For each question, notice:
- Am I demanding an immediate answer?
- Am I frustrated with the uncertainty?
- Am I putting life on hold until I “figure this out”?
Practice Rilke’s approach:
- “This is a question I’m living with, not a problem to solve today”
- “I can be patient with this uncertainty”
- “What if I loved this question instead of resenting it?”
- “What is this question teaching me by its presence in my life?”
2. The Patience Practice (Throughout the Day)
When you feel the pressure to have answers you don’t yet have, practice Rilke’s patience:
The pressure arises:
- Someone asks “What’s your plan?”
- You feel you should know what you want
- Decision paralysis because you don’t have clarity
- Anxiety about the uncertain future
- Comparison to people who seem to have it figured out
The automatic response:
- Panic
- Force a decision
- Make up an answer to sound certain
- Berate yourself for not knowing
- Frantically search for the “right” answer
The Rilke practice:
Breathe.
Remind yourself: “I am living the question. The answer will come through living, not through forcing.”
Accept: “I don’t know yet. And that’s okay. I’m exactly where I need to be.”
Notice: “What is this question inviting me to explore? What am I learning by living with uncertainty?”
Trust: “The answer is forming. I don’t need to see it yet for it to be real.”
3. Living vs. Solving (Midday Reflection)
Pause midday to check: Am I living my questions or just anxiously trying to solve them?
Solving mode (ineffective):
- Obsessively analyzing the same question
- Googling “how to know if…” for the hundredth time
- Asking everyone’s opinion hoping for certainty
- Making pro/con lists that never lead to clarity
- Thinking in circles without new information
- Desperate for someone to tell you the answer
Living mode (Rilke’s way):
- Paying attention to your actual experience
- Noticing what draws you, what repels you
- Gathering data through living, not just thinking
- Staying present even without clarity
- Trusting your embodied wisdom over abstract analysis
- Letting the question inform your choices without demanding final answers
Ask yourself:
- “Am I living today, or am I stuck in my head trying to solve my questions?”
- “What would it mean to live this question today instead of solve it?”
- “What action can I take from within the question, without needing to answer it first?”
Example:
- Question: “Should I change careers?”
- Solving mode: Endlessly researching, comparing, analyzing, paralyzed
- Living mode: Try a project in the new field. Talk to people doing that work. Notice your energy. Gather real experience. Let the answer emerge through living.
4. Evening Question-Living Review (15 minutes)
Before bed, reflect on how you lived with your questions today:
Journal:
- What questions did I carry today?
- Did I try to force answers, or did I live with patient uncertainty?
- Where I forced: What was the cost?
- Where I was patient: What did I notice?
- What did living with these questions teach me today?
- Any small insights?
- Any new understanding?
- Any peace with not-knowing?
- How can I love my questions more tomorrow?
- Less frustration with uncertainty
- More curiosity about what the questions reveal
- More trust in the unfolding process
- What am I noticing about the direction I’m moving, even without having “the answer”?
Rilke’s promise: You are living toward the answer, even when you can’t see it yet.
A Modern Application: The Relationship Question
Let’s apply Rilke’s wisdom to one of life’s most common agonizing questions: “Is this the right relationship for me?”
The situation: You’re in a relationship. It’s not terrible, but it’s not clearly “the one” either. You have doubts, but also real connection. You don’t know if you should stay or go. This uncertainty is eating you alive.
The conventional approach (forcing an answer):
What you do:
- Make endless pro/con lists
- Google “signs you should break up” daily
- Ask everyone’s opinion
- Analyze every interaction for “signs”
- Try to think your way to certainty
- Give yourself deadlines: “I need to decide by…”
- Bounce between “I should stay” and “I should leave”
- Feel paralyzed, anxious, stuck
What happens: Months or years pass. You’re no closer to clarity. The relationship suffers from your constant evaluation. You suffer from chronic indecision. You’re solving, not living.
The Rilke approach (living the question):
Step 1 – Acknowledge the question: “I don’t know if this relationship is right for me long-term. This is a real, important question. And I cannot answer it through thinking alone.”
Step 2 – Make peace with uncertainty: “I don’t need to decide today, or this month. I can live with this question for a while. Not forever—but long enough to gather real experience.”
Step 3 – Live the question: Instead of constantly evaluating, be fully present in the relationship:
- Show up authentically
- Express your needs honestly
- Notice how you feel when you’re together vs. apart
- Pay attention to whether you’re growing or shrinking
- Observe whether conflict brings you closer or pushes you apart
- Notice whether you can be yourself or must perform
- See if challenges deepen connection or reveal incompatibility
Step 4 – Gather embodied data: Not “what do I think about this?” but “what do I actually experience?”
- Does my body relax or tense around them?
- Do I feel energized or drained after we’re together?
- Can I imagine a future together, or does that feel wrong?
- Do I hide parts of myself or can I be whole?
- Do our values actually align, or am I trying to force compatibility?
Step 5 – Trust the unfolding: “Live along some distant day into the answer.”
After truly living the question for months (not years of agonizing, but months of genuine presence and attention), the answer often becomes clear naturally:
You wake up one day and just know you need to leave. Or you realize you’ve been building something real and you want to commit. The answer emerges from living, not from thinking.
The difference:
Forcing the answer: Chronic anxiety, paralysis, suffering, no actual clarity
Living the question: Present relationship, gathered wisdom, eventual organic clarity
The answer is the same either way, but one path is torture and the other is lived experience.
The Deeper Philosophy
Uncertainty as Teacher
Rilke understood that uncertainty is not the absence of wisdom—it’s a form of wisdom itself.
When you don’t know, you’re in a state of openness:
- You pay closer attention
- You gather more information
- You stay humble
- You remain curious
- You avoid premature closure
The person who “knows” stops learning. They’ve closed the question. They’ve fixed their understanding.
The person who lives the question keeps growing. They’re in relationship with mystery, and mystery teaches.
Becoming Through Questions
Rilke believed that questions are how we become ourselves.
You don’t discover who you are by thinking about it abstractly. You discover (create) who you are by living the questions:
- “What do I love?”—answered by noticing what you’re drawn to
- “What am I here to do?”—answered by trying things and seeing what fits
- “Who do I want to become?”—answered by making choices that shape you
The questions don’t just lead to answers. Living the questions shapes who you become.
You are formed by the questions you carry and how you carry them.
The Spiritual Dimension
For Rilke, there was something almost sacred about living with questions.
To live the questions is to:
- Accept your limitations (you don’t have all the answers)
- Trust in something larger (a process, meaning, unfolding)
- Stay open to mystery (not everything can or should be explained)
- Embrace your humanity (uncertainty is part of being human)
It’s a kind of faith—not religious necessarily, but existential: Faith that meaning emerges through living, that your path unfolds, that you don’t need to have it all figured out.
Modern culture hates this. We want certainty, control, clear answers, guaranteed outcomes.
Rilke offers something older and wiser: Patient dwelling in mystery, trusting the journey even when you can’t see the destination.
Your Practice for Today
Here’s your challenge based on Rilke’s teaching:
Today, practice loving one question you’ve been anxiously trying to answer.
The Practice:
1. Choose your question:
What important question are you carrying that has no clear answer yet?
- About your path, purpose, calling
- About a relationship or connection
- About identity or becoming
- About loss, grief, or healing
- About meaning or values
2. Stop trying to solve it today:
Give yourself permission: “I don’t need to answer this question today. Or this week. Maybe not for months or years.”
3. Reframe your relationship to it:
From: “This uncertainty is torture. I need an answer NOW.”
To: “This is a question I’m living with. It’s teaching me something by its presence in my life.”
4. Ask what the question invites:
- What is this question inviting me to explore?
- What am I learning by living with this uncertainty?
- How is this question shaping who I’m becoming?
- What would it mean to love this question instead of resent it?
5. Live the question today:
Take one action from within the question, without needing to answer it:
- If questioning your career: Try something in the new field
- If questioning a relationship: Be fully present instead of constantly evaluating
- If questioning your purpose: Engage in something meaningful to you right now
- If questioning identity: Express one authentic truth about yourself
6. Practice patient trust:
“Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
You don’t need to see the answer forming for it to be forming.
Trust the process. Live the question. Let the answer emerge in its own time.
Essential Reading: Dive Deeper into Rainer Maria Rilke
If this teaching resonates with you, explore these books:
Primary Sources:
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Essential reading—one of the most beloved books on living creatively
- Ten letters of profound wisdom about art, love, life, solitude
- Short, beautiful, deeply moving
- Every creative person should read this
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
- Translated by Stephen Mitchell
- Includes Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus
- His questions and uncertainties transformed into art
- For those wanting to experience his poetry
The Poet’s Guide to Life by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Excerpts from letters and writings
- Organized by life themes
- Wisdom on solitude, love, creativity, death
- Accessible introduction to his thought
Modern Interpretations:
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
- Poet dwelling in questions of joy and attention
- Living the questions through daily essays
- Rilke’s approach applied to everyday wonder
- Beautiful, life-affirming
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
- Creative recovery through living questions
- Process over product
- Trusting uncertainty in creative work
- Practical exercises for artists living Rilke’s wisdom
Applied Wisdom:
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts
- Philosophy of embracing uncertainty
- Why security is impossible and that’s liberating
- Complements Rilke’s teaching perfectly
- For those struggling with need for certainty
Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chödrön
- Buddhist approach to living with questions
- 108 teachings on uncertainty and openness
- Meditations on dwelling in not-knowing
- Practical spiritual approach to Rilke’s wisdom
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
- Living the ultimate questions through suffering
- Finding meaning in uncertainty
- Answers emerging through experience, not thought
- Profound testimony to living questions
Closing Reflection
Rainer Maria Rilke spent his entire life living with profound questions about art, love, God, death, solitude, and what it means to be human.
He never “figured it all out.” He never had all the answers. He remained, in many ways, uncertain and searching until his death.
And yet, from that uncertainty, from that patient dwelling in questions, emerged some of the most beautiful poetry in human language.
Because he didn’t need certainty to live fully. He needed questions to live deeply.
Today, you’re carrying questions. Important ones. Questions about who you are, what you want, where you’re going, how to live.
You want answers. You want certainty. You want to have it figured out.
But what if the questions themselves are the point?
What if loving your questions, living them patiently, trusting the slow emergence of answers through living rather than thinking—what if that is wisdom itself?
You don’t need all the answers to live well today.
You need to be present today. To pay attention. To gather experience. To stay open. To trust the process.
“Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The answer is forming. You’re moving toward it. You don’t need to see it yet for it to be real.
Be patient with yourself. Love your questions. Live them.
The answers will come.
Reflection Questions
Take a moment to journal or contemplate:
- What important question am I carrying that I’ve been frantically trying to answer?
- What would change if I loved this question instead of resented it?
- How can I live this question today, instead of just think about it?
- What might this question be teaching me by its presence in my life?
Tomorrow’s Wisdom
Join us tomorrow as we explore a teaching from James Baldwin, one of America’s most important writers and social critics, on the necessity of confronting reality, no matter how painful, as the only path to transformation and love.
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Essential Reading: 📚 Letters to a Young Poet – Essential wisdom on living creatively 📖 The Poet’s Guide to Life – Rilke’s wisdom organized by theme 🎯 The Wisdom of Insecurity – Embracing uncertainty 💫 Comfortable with Uncertainty – Buddhist approach to not-knowing
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