Live the Questions

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes.

A SHORT STORY

The great spiritual teacher and writer Joanna Macy passed away last week.

Her translations of Rilke, especially Letters to a Young Poet, have been constant companions in my life. If there’s one book I return to again and again, it’s this one.

Seventeen years ago, as I headed toward Everest Base Camp alone, I wrote this in my journal:

In his letters to the Young Cadet, Rilke writes:
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now."

That line has guided me through every major turning point in my life.

It's a way of being with uncertainty—not fixing it, not rushing past it, but allowing it to speak.

And strangely, it does.
When I live in the question, something often comes toward me.
Something unexpected. Something I hadn’t yet become.

In a world speeding toward answers, especially with AI, Rilke reminds me:
It’s all still a mystery.
All of it.

And maybe the mystery is what makes it all worth living.

What questions do you need to live in today?

A POEM

“Widening Circles” by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translated by Joanna Macy)

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Grateful,

Michael