be patient

.

.

Allow your judgments their own undisturbed development, 

which, like any unfolding, must come from within and can by nothing be forced or hastened. 

.

Everything is gestation and then birth. 

.

To allow each impression and each embryo of a feeling to complete itself in the dark, 

in the unsayable, the not-knowing, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, 

and humbly and patiently to await the dawning of a new clarity: that alone is the way of the artist -

in understanding as in creating.

.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 from Letters to a Young Poet, April 23, 1903
Rilke portrait by westhoff


.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart

and try to love the questions themselves...

Do not now seek the answers, 

which cannot be given to you because you will 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.

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