I’ve never been much of a poetry person. But this poem? It’s stayed with me for over 25 years. A dear friend read it to me during a difficult season, and I’ve shared it countless times since—with clients, with loved ones, with myself.
It’s for those moments when clarity feels out of reach—when we desperately want answers, but none seem available. We often push ourselves to “figure it out,” chasing understanding when all we can really do is stay present with the unknown. This poem gives permission to pause. To stop demanding resolution. To live the questions instead.
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. 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 now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet
If you're in a season of uncertainty or grappling with questions that don’t have quick answers, individual therapy can offer a place to slow down, be curious, and stay with what’s unfolding. At Clarity Counseling Seattle, we help people learn to relate to their inner world with patience—not perfection.
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Sometimes the most healing thing we can do isn’t to solve the problem, but to stay with the mystery—and trust that answers will come in their own time.