A Un Joven Poeta Rainer Maria Rilke — Cartas

He isn't romanticizing misery. He is saying that the voice you need to listen to is the one that only speaks when you are alone.

We spend billions of dollars a year trying to escape loneliness. We scroll, we date frantically, we work late, we numb. Rilke says: Stop running. “Love your loneliness and bear the pain it causes you with a simple, soft song.” He understood that loneliness is the price of originality. If you are always surrounded by the noise of the crowd, you can only ever think the crowd’s thoughts. The artist—and by extension, anyone trying to live an authentic life—must guard their solitude like a fragile animal. cartas a un joven poeta rainer maria rilke

But it will give you something better: Permission. He isn't romanticizing misery

There is a specific kind of quiet that comes from reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet . It is not the silence of a library, but the deep hush of someone telling you a secret you’ve always needed to hear. We scroll, we date frantically, we work late, we numb

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.