Does she really mean that we shouldn't pursue answers at all, or simply that we should pursue answers without any expectation of finding them? That we should not be afraid of the unanswerable questions?
I can't give up looking for answers entirely, but I think trying to find The Answer to any question is misguided. Without some answers, even lowercase, we wallow in inaction and indecision, places that are all too familiar, but rarely satisfying. I believe in intentional change, both of ourselves and our environment (which we change unintentionally merely by existing). Intentional change must be directed by something like answers, however temporary they may be.
I agree wholeheartedly with Remen that life's journey should be taken in good company!
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“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. 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”
catalin, your blog entry brought this quote to mind. it's a rilke quote that i really like. take care, polly
My friend M sent me this by email:
As the poet Alfred Alvarez says in his fine essay "Letting Go":
"I gradually saw that I had been using the wrong language; I had
translated the thing into Americanese. Too many movies, too many novels, too
many trips to the States had switched my understanding into a hopeful,
alien tongue. I no longer thought of myself as unhappy; instead, I
had 'problems'. Which is an optimistic way of putting it, since problems
imply solutions, whereas unhappiness is merely a condition of life
which you must live with, like the weather. Once I had accepted that
there weren't ever going to be any answers, even in death, I found to my
surprise that I didn't much care whether I was happy or unhappy;
'problems' and 'the problem of problems' no longer existed. And that in itself
is already the beginning of happiness."
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