Cartas A Un Joven Poeta Rainer Maria Rilke -

But it will give you something better: Permission.

Letters to a Young Poet is not a self-help book. It won't give you ten steps to happiness. In fact, it might make you more uncomfortable with the shallowness of your daily life.

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.” cartas a un joven poeta rainer maria rilke

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.

The young poet, Franz Xaver Kappus, was a 19-year-old military cadet. He felt trapped by uniforms, drills, and the suffocating expectations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He sent Rilke his poems, hoping for technical advice on rhyme or meter. Instead, Rilke performed a kind of surgery on his soul. But it will give you something better: Permission

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.

What Rilke Knew About Loneliness (That We’ve Forgotten) In fact, it might make you more uncomfortable

Permission to be slow. Permission to be unsure. Permission to be lonely without being broken. Permission to trust that the ache you feel is not a sign that you are doing life wrong, but that you are, perhaps for the first time, doing it right.

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.

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.