Chapter 6: Living the Questions With Patience

The Words: Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903

In 1903, a young man who wanted to be a poet wrote to Rainer Maria Rilke, a poet still in his twenties, and asked for advice. Rilke answered him in a series of letters, which were published after Rilke's death as Letters to a Young Poet. In the letter of 16 July 1903, he gives some of the most famous advice in the collection. In my own words, he says: be patient with everything that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or like books written in a language you do not yet know. Do not search now for answers that cannot be given to you yet, because you could not live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, slowly and without noticing it, you will live your way into the answer one distant day.

The Life Behind the Words

Rilke was born in 1875 and wrote mainly in German. As a boy he was sent to a military school, where he was very unhappy. He left and chose a life of writing, and he spent much of his life travelling and living in many different places, often with very little money. The young man who wrote to him was a student at a military school too, which may be one reason why Rilke answered him so warmly. He became one of the great poets of Europe, known for poems that look closely at single things, such as a panther in a cage or a rose.

When he wrote these letters, Rilke was himself still searching. He was not yet sure of his own path, and he was learning how to work patiently from older artists he admired. He did not write as a master speaking down to a student, but as one searcher writing to another. Rilke died in 1926, and three years later the young man published the letters, believing that they might help other people too. They have done so for almost a century.

What the Words Ask of Us

Rilke's words ask for a kind of patience that busy lives rarely allow. When something in us is unclear, such as what work to choose, whether to love someone or what to believe, we want an answer at once. Rilke says that some answers cannot be rushed, because we are not yet the person who could understand them. The way forward is to live with the question, to carry it honestly and to let life slowly shape the answer. A question, in this view, is not a problem to escape. It is a room we have not yet learned to open.

Think of Marco, a man in his thirties who cannot decide whether to stay in a steady job or to train for the work he has always dreamed of. Friends give him confident advice in both directions. Following Rilke, he could instead give the question time: take a short evening course, talk to people who do the work, notice which days make him feel alive. Months later, he may find that he no longer asks the question in the same way, because he has slowly been living towards its answer.

Similar Words From Around the World

In the Apology, his account of the speech his teacher Socrates gave at his trial, the philosopher Plato records why Socrates thought he might be a little wiser than others (21d). In my own words: neither he nor the man he questioned truly knew anything fine and good, but the other man thought he knew, while Socrates did not think he knew what he did not know. His only advantage was being honest about his own not-knowing. This echo supports Rilke. To love the questions, we must first admit that they are still questions, without pretending to have answers.

Montaigne, whom we met in an earlier chapter, chose a short question as his motto: "What do I know?" He even had it put on a medal, together with a pair of scales (Essays 2.12). The scales show balance: a mind that weighs things carefully and does not jump to conclusions. Where Socrates admits that he does not know, Montaigne turns the question into a lifelong companion, almost a friend. This is close to Rilke's advice to love the questions, and it adds a cheerful note: living with uncertainty can be a source of curiosity, not only of worry.

Living It Today

Rilke's advice can help at every age. A teenager who does not yet know what to study can stop feeling ashamed of not knowing. A couple facing a hard choice can give it time instead of forcing it. Someone grieving can let the question "why?" stay open, without needing a neat answer. An older person may notice how many questions of youth were answered not by thinking, but by living. Rilke wrote to a young man, but his words seem to grow wiser as the reader grows older.

This week, try writing down one question that is unsolved in your heart. Do not try to answer it. Just write it clearly, and put the paper where you will see it now and then. Each time you see it, ask not "what is the answer?" but "how can I live this question well today?" You may be surprised. Questions that are lived patiently often turn, in time, into the very answers we were looking for.

Chapter 7: Now, This Person, and Doing Good

The Words: Leo Tolstoy, 1903

In 1903, Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story called "Three Questions". In it, a king wants to know three things: the right time to begin any task, the most important people to listen to, and the most important thing to do. Wise men give him many different answers, so he visits a hermit who lives simply in a wood. The king helps the old man dig his garden, cares for a wounded stranger who stumbles out of the trees, and by evening learns the answers from what has happened. In my own words, the hermit tells him: the most important time is now, because it is the only time we have power over. The most important person is the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do that person good.

The Life Behind the Words

Tolstoy was born in 1828 and wrote in Russian. He grew up on a large family estate, served as a soldier as a young man, and became one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. His long novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina follow many lives through love, loss, war and change, and readers around the world still read them. Even as a young man he cared about the education of village children and started a school for them. But fame and success did not quiet his deepest question: what is the meaning of life, and how should a person live?

In middle age he went through a long crisis over that question, and he came out of it with a simple faith in love and in doing good. He wore plain clothes, worked in the fields beside the farm workers and wrote clear short stories and tales that anyone could read. "Three Questions" is one of them. He wrote it in his mid-seventies, after a long life of thinking. He died in 1910, at the age of eighty-two, still searching and still writing.

What the Words Ask of Us

Tolstoy's three answers can sound almost too simple, but each one goes against a common habit. We often think the important time is later, when things settle down. We often think the important people are the powerful, the famous or the ones far away. And we often think the important thing is a great achievement. Tolstoy brings everything close. The time is now. The person is right here. The task is to do them good, however small that good may be. A whole life, in this view, is built out of these near and ordinary moments.

Imagine Amara, who runs a small corner shop. She is busy, worried about the accounts and thinking about tomorrow's deliveries. A little boy comes in to buy one sweet with a handful of small coins, counting them carefully. Amara could hurry him. Instead she stops, smiles and waits while he counts, then tells him he did well. It takes one minute. In that minute, she has answered all three questions: the time was now, the person was the boy, and the thing was to do him good.

Similar Words From Around the World

There is a phrase in Japanese from the tradition of the tea ceremony: ichigo ichie, which means one time, one meeting. It teaches that each gathering, even with people we see often, should be treated as a meeting that will never come again in exactly the same way. This echo deepens Tolstoy's second answer. The person in front of us is important not only because they are here, but because this moment with them will not return. Seen this way, even a short conversation becomes something to honour.

In the Sayings of the Fathers, a collection in Hebrew of teachings of the early rabbis, the teacher Hillel, who lived about two thousand years ago, asks three questions of his own (Pirkei Avot 1.14). In my own words: if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? Hillel's three questions and Tolstoy's three answers meet at the same point: now. Hillel adds a balance that the story leaves unspoken. Caring for others does not mean forgetting ourselves, and caring for ourselves must not shut out others.

Living It Today

Tolstoy's answers fit any life. A doctor with a crowded waiting room can give full attention to the patient in the chair. A grandparent can put away the phone while a grandchild talks. A student can help the classmate sitting beside them before thinking about some great future plan. A person who lives alone can treat a neighbour on the stairs as the most important person of that moment. None of this needs money, power or special talent.

Here is something to try today. Three times during the day, stop and ask yourself Tolstoy's questions in their answered form: is this now? Who is with me? What good can I do for them? The answer may be as simple as listening without interrupting, holding a door or saying a kind word. By evening, you will have lived three small chapters of the king's story. The hermit's answers were not hidden on a faraway mountain. They were waiting in the day itself.