He warns that young people usually throw themselves at each other to avoid facing their own loneliness. But that isn't love; that is distraction. Real love is difficult. It asks you to become a whole person first.
If you are feeling lost, overwhelmed by the news, or simply stuck in the performance of adulthood, here is why this 120-year-old book still stings. cartas a un joven poeta rainer maria rilke
Are you sad? Don’t drink it away. Sit in it. Rilke insists that sadness is not an enemy. It is a season. It is the soil going fallow so that roots can grow deep enough to survive the winter. He warns that young people usually throw themselves
So, if you are a young poet—or simply a young human—put down the phone tonight. Pick up this tiny blue book. And let Rilke walk you home to yourself. It asks you to become a whole person first
Our world moves at the speed of a click. Rilke’s world moved at the speed of sap rising in a tree. He writes: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign tongue.” He tells Kappus that he is trying to answer questions too early. You cannot force the answers any more than you can force a tree to blossom in December. The task is not to find the solution tonight. The task is to live the question until you grow into the answer.
For Rilke, love is two solitudes protecting each other. It is not about merging or losing yourself. It is about two people standing so firmly in their own truth that they can look across the distance between them and say, “I see you.”
But it will give you something better: Permission.