“Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.” Nietsche
I remember a time when I didn’t get what Nietsche was saying here. A mystery? Huh? It didn’t make sense to me. Now it does. It means life is full of unknowns, surprises, and uncertainties. You have to be okay with the things that you don’t/can’t know. Sure, go ahead and make plans but leave room for the unexpected. Get comfortable with the not-knowing. Accept those unpredictable moments and trust in those times when not everything goes according to plan. As some people put it, wear life like a loose garment.
Embracing the mystery means being open to new experiences, learning from the unexpected, and cultivating a sense of wonder and awe about the world around you. Stay curious. Out of that curiosity can come humility and a deep reverence and respect for the vastness of the universe (s?) as well as a clear appreciation for the limitations of being a human being.
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The poet Mary Oliver writes eloquently about mystery, wonderment, and awe. Listen to her wisdom in these two poems:
The Fish by Mary Oliver
The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Attached is a You Tube interview with the poet Mary Oliver, conducted by the poet Coleman Barks. If you can access it, you can also listen to Ms. Oliver read the two poems cited above. Here is a short excerpt from the interview:
Coleman: “I love the questions that [Mary] fills her poems with and they leave me open and empty and pleased to have no answers….Is that the way you want it?”
Mary: “That’s absolutely the way I want it…So many of us live most of our lives seeking the unanswerable and then somehow demeaning or bypassing those things that can’t be answered therefore denuding one’s life of the acceptance of mystery and the pleasure of mystery. The willingness to live with mystery is greatly what I think about and if I could do something for people I would say don’t forget the mystery. Love the mystery. Be gad of it. Don’t want answers all the time. “
If you have the time to listen to this six minute video, by all means, give it a listen. I think you will enjoy it.
I met Rainer Maria Rilke in some college class and I’ve always felt a kind of connection to him. I’ve been fascinated by this quote and now I get it:
Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
I think he means to live in the tension of always asking the questions, knowing that life has a way of working out. Breathe in the moment and let life unfold. Easier said than done.
I definitely agree with “easier said than done” but I also agree that it is worth the effort to try to.