The Book of Questions | Michael Valliant

It’s tough sitting in not knowing. And at the same time, being able to be okay with not knowing is maybe the key to happiness or joy–being able to live in questions and uncertainty.

One of my favorite Facebook pages is “Contemplative Monk.” This week, they used a meditation on consecutive mornings by a favorite writer of mine:

Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart,
and try to love the questions
themselves
as if they were locked rooms
or books written in a very foreign language.
Do not 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.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It comes from Rike’s “Letters to a Young Poet,” which is a book I keep on multiple shelves, because I forget it and need to hear it a number of times.

And along with Rilke’s words, the folks at CM posted the picture at the top of the page here, and the two washed over me–the peace, the anticipation, sitting at the ready for whatever comes. With coffee. One of my favorite ways to start a day and a posture I try to take when I sit down at my desk in the morning (though my desk has more books strewn about it).

It’s always the questions that drive me, and people a lot smarter than I am point out that we are defined by our questions. Jesus frequently answered questions with questions (or stories), Socrates was known for the same thing, as were the Desert Fathers and all sorts of deep thinkers around the world.

“Live the questions now.” When we hold out for certainty, we are hopelessly stuck. There are so many things I think I’d like to know, which would put my mind at ease, make life more simple. But that’s a waiting game we can’t win, and even in winning, we lose that beginning of the day, sunrise possibility.

The times my heart beats fastest, the times my mind is most open, the times when I feel most connected to God, Creation, other people, are the times when it’s not a matter of knowing or thinking, it’s a moment or experience full of feeling, shared and reflected back. When no amount of knowledge can add a single thing to it.

When I can look with the eyes of a child, the eyes of wonder, and live the questions now.

When does the butterfly read
what flies written on its wings?
Pablo Neruda, “The Book of Questions”

Dreams aren’t hash browns. You can’t just walk into Waffle House and order your dreams “scattered, smothered, covered, topped, and chunked.” Unless you dream of hash browns. Which is understandable.

For most of us, realizing our dreams takes vision, ideas, focus, work, luck, connections, Divine Intervention, or some combination thereof. And it’s a lot easier to put them off, defer them, without even realizing it. Distractions abound. I have yet to find that dream menu.

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We’re doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification, and hard work, we simply consume a product. – Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art”

Forgive me my soapbox. This stuff all strikes a pretty deep soul chord for me. I’m a carpe the diem guy. I try to make the most of each day and not miss opportunities to kayak, paddleboard, or catch a sunset. I try to remember, store, and appreciate those experiences in and for themselves, as well as transmute or translate them into something I can pass along.

Sometimes carpe’ing the diem means forgoing the sunrise to think and write. The September issue of Tidewater Times is online, and it has a book review I got to collaborate with friend and former teacher Father John Merchant to put together. Father Merchant sent me a copy of Yann Martel’s “The High Mountains of Portugal,” so it seemed fitting to turn it back around on him. Sometimes carpe’ing the diem means putting in the work (planting the seeds) to make something happen later.

Some of my dreams require trail running shoes. Coming up with fun outdoor challenges, doing them, and writing about them helped me land a cover feature story for Trail Runner Magazine in June 2008 and I’ve been looking to create more of those kind of adventures, both to experience and to write about.

The next adventure, running-hiking-walking the Appalachian Trail across Maryland with trail running friends, is in the planning phase to take place this fall (a shout out to Craig Behrin for channeling the spirit of the adventure into a cool logo). That is the kind of experience where so many of the things in life that I dig all come together.

I can dream things up all day long. Anyone can. It’s when I start to do things about them, come up with ways to make them happen, and start acting on them, that life gets interesting, and maybe God smiles.

Whom can I ask what I came to make happen in this world? – Pablo Neruda, “The Book of Questions”

Tag: The Book of Questions

Live the questions now

Dreams Aren’t Hash Browns