When I was an 18-year-old senior in high school about to graduate from Juilliard Pre-College in May 2010, my good friend Anya who had graduated two years before sent me a quote:
"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 don't know if she knows how much this quote meant and still means to me. I live by it. A lot of the anxiety that all of us experience comes from our inability to deal with the unknown. A lot of my anxiety in college came from the fact that I was not yet able to appreciate the spaces between conclusions within which life happens. It's never a comfortable feeling to be pushed off a cliff when the rope to swing hasn't come yet. And that's how it feels; when the situation that fully supported you changes and the next one hasn't come, or when an important relationship ends and you have yet to find one that won't.
Living the questions is my mantra for dealing with lingering anxiety that I may have. I should probably get it tattooed on me at some point. My favorite part of the quote is the ending sentence that says, "perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." It describes so accurately the resolution that often comes to our questions when we're least expecting it. When I was struggling with getting over some of my past experiences, I used to say that I can't wait for the day when I'd wake up and realize that I wasn't hurting anymore. Part of me would doubt that that day would come and part of me believed in that day more strongly than anything.
Living the questions, overall isn't really that bad. After all, that's what most of us are doing. Even when we do accomplish something and some of our questions are resolved, more come up. The beautiful thing is that we all live together in the in between spaces and are forced to rely on each other for comfort and camaraderie while we all live together into our own individual answers, hoping that our demons play well with others'.
Just this quote alone would have made a worthwhile post without all my musings on the side. I hope that by sharing it, I've encouraged you to live through some of your questions today instead of attempting to pass them by.
À tout a l'heure, mes amis!
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