August 22, 2026

Love The Questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.

Rilke wrote this in 1903 to Franz Xaver Kappus, a young military cadet who had written asking whether his poems were any good and whether he should abandon the army for a writer's life. Rilke, only twenty-seven himself and still finding his own way, refused to hand over easy answers and instead urged patience with uncertainty. He was living a wandering, unsettled existence at the time, without money or a fixed home, and he knew firsthand how tempting it is to grasp for resolution too soon. The advice speaks to wonder because it treats not-knowing as an invitation rather than a problem to be solved.