Chapters, Doors, and Closure
“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.” -Rilke
I have always been someone who needed closure. Someone who stayed up late reading one more chapter… just one more, until I know what actually happens to Harry! Or the person who delved deep into the shadows of my past to understand why I am the way I am. The same is true of my need to dissect the rubble of a broken relationship until I understand what went wrong. Perhaps that is why the above quote from Rilke has brought me so much comfort throughout the recent years of my life. When I discovered it, it spoke to all the uncertainties in my world and gave me permission to not have to chase down the answers for every missing piece of my life.
Tonight, I drove home after a semi-eventful evening where I closed the door on something in my life. I was thinking about all of the unknowns, all of the what ifs that I will probably never know. I found it rather peculiar that I felt a profound sense of peace as I watched the sunset behind the Montana mountains. Then, I thought of Rilke. As I let the quote settle into my thoughts and comfort me like a hug from a dear friend, I realized that some questions I may never “live my way into” and that’s okay.
I’m not sure of where the sudden assurance in being at peace in these uncertainties has come from. Maybe it’s because I already knew some of the answers and proceeded to ignore what the universe was telling me. Maybe it’s because the first time the universe tried to get my attention, I let my heart break a little, enough to know what I was losing. When I did that, I realized I would live through the loss. That way, tonight, when I have finally lost that part of my life, I realized I was okay. Don’t get me wrong — I have and likely will continue to experience a broad range of emotions. As an empath, that’s pretty much what I do. And that, too, is okay. I will live through those emotions in the same way I will live through the questions, whether there are answers or not and I will grow through them.
Tonight as I drove, every song on the radio seemed to be telling the same story: You needed this to get where you are now. These challenges make us stronger. Again, it was like the universe was there, cheering me on, saying “it’s not over, it’s just the end of a chapter. Tomorrow is full of potential and you get to find out where it takes you.” It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? How the universe seems to know what will get our attention? Both in what will break our hearts and what will heal them. In my life, I have found the paradox that those things often come all at once. Sometimes we need to break before we can heal. As Rilke pointed out, “the point is to live them. Live the questions now.” Whether or not we have the answers, “which cannot be given to us now, because we would not be able to live them” [emphasis mine]. I guess I’m finally realizing that’s the point and that there is a certain beauty in all of this. That I can live in the space of unknown, the space of the questions and uncertainties, and I can find peace here, suspended by certain divine trust that makes the questions — and the ability to live them — gloriously possible.
