Fact #36: We quote smart people...

...because they say it better than we ever could.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. -- Rilke

As someone who makes a frequent habit of reading the last chapters of books first, that's difficult advice to take. But the thought that things come to us when we're ready makes more and more sense to me lately. Ideas, opportunities, answers.. if we're not in the right place to understand them, will we even recognize them if they present themselves?

But the thing I like best about the quote is that it's not really about waiting. It's about living. We don't grow into the answers by just sitting around twiddling our thumbs. They come to us through the process of experiencing life. Sometimes not right away -- that's where having patience helps -- but they do come.

And seriously, who doesn't love a good locked room?


Til tomorrow!