Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Eric here with another mini episode, and
Speaker 1: this week I want to talk about living the questions
Speaker 1: in our lives. One of my favorite books of all
Speaker 1: time is Letters to a Young Poet by Rilka, and
Speaker 1: the premise of the book is there's this young man,
Speaker 1: his name is Franz Kappas, who's abudding poet, and he
Speaker 1: writes to Rilka asking for advice, and one of my
Speaker 1: favorite passages goes like this, I want to beg you
Speaker 1: as much as I can. Dear sir, to be patient
Speaker 1: towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and try
Speaker 1: I to love the questions themselves, liked locked rooms and
Speaker 1: like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Speaker 1: Do not now seek the answers which cannot be given you,
Speaker 1: because you would not be able to live them. And
Speaker 1: the point is to live everything, live the questions now.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along
Speaker 1: some distant day into the answer. And I absolutely love
Speaker 1: that quote. And the quote made me think to ask
Speaker 1: in the Facebook group some of the questions that people
Speaker 1: were holding in their lives, and the responses were overwhelming,
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd just read a couple of them.
Speaker 1: I've summarized a couple to kind of group together multiple ones,
Speaker 1: But there are things like this, will my health condition
Speaker 1: come back? Should I stay in the relationship I'm in,
Speaker 1: or should I leave? Will I always be single? What's
Speaker 1: the point of it all? How do I find peace within?
Speaker 1: I particularly like this one. How do I find the
Speaker 1: energy to do good if doing good takes so much energy?
Speaker 1: What is my deathbed regret really going to be after
Speaker 1: ten years of chronic illness that took away my career
Speaker 1: and dreams of a family. What is my purpose now now?
Speaker 1: I don't propose to have the answers to perhaps any
Speaker 1: of these questions, but I have a couple of thoughts
Speaker 1: about living the questions in our lives, and I think
Speaker 1: we all are all of the time because the future
Speaker 1: is essentially unknowable. We don't know what's coming. But there's
Speaker 1: a few things that I think are interesting if we
Speaker 1: look at questions, and one of them is that they
Speaker 1: almost always point to the future, not to the present moment,
Speaker 1: not to where we are now. So questions are, by
Speaker 1: their very nature, they are thought experiments more than they
Speaker 1: are experiences of living today. And that's kind of what
Speaker 1: Rilka is getting at I think is that you live
Speaker 1: in the uncertainty today, but the key is to live it,
Speaker 1: to be alive today, not to always be wondering what
Speaker 1: tomorrow is going to look like. And we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of our time either fearing or waiting for or
Speaker 1: planning for the future. And I am as guilty as
Speaker 1: anyone of this. I think. You know, my major thought
Speaker 1: pattern is one of a planner, right. It's my brain
Speaker 1: is always planning what's going to happen next, then I'll
Speaker 1: do this, and then what if we did this, and
Speaker 1: well we could think about doing that, and it just
Speaker 1: goes on and on and on and so it's all
Speaker 1: a way of pulling me away from the present moment. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not one of those people that thinks like being
Speaker 1: in the present moment is the only purpose in life, right,
Speaker 1: Thinking towards the future, planning, anticipating, um correcting, all these
Speaker 1: things are very important. But if you're anything like me,
Speaker 1: I do that about more than I need to. That's
Speaker 1: the primary way my brain works. Instead of being the
Speaker 1: occasional I'm planning and most of the time I'm present
Speaker 1: to what's happening. It's almost exactly the opposite most of
Speaker 1: the time I'm planning or thinking about the future, and
Speaker 1: only a little bit am I actually present. And then
Speaker 1: there's that idea of for me, it's the I'll be
Speaker 1: happy when this thing happens. And that's another variation that
Speaker 1: runs itself through these questions. It's the I will be
Speaker 1: happy when X day comes. And so it's back to
Speaker 1: this idea of loving the questions and living the questions,
Speaker 1: living right in the uncertainty that we are in today
Speaker 1: and not knowing what's coming and not basing everything we
Speaker 1: have on what's going to happen in the future. But
Speaker 1: to be here now, there's another thing that this makes
Speaker 1: me think of and being okay with not knowing, whether
Speaker 1: it be what's going to happen in the future or
Speaker 1: not knowing answers to certain questions. As humans, we are
Speaker 1: not very good at this. We don't like uncertainty, and further,
Speaker 1: we've been taught through an educational system that we should
Speaker 1: know the answer. And so not only are these questions
Speaker 1: concerning because the outcome of them has a direct impact
Speaker 1: on us, we also don't like it because we feel
Speaker 1: like we should know the answer. This question of should
Speaker 1: I stay in my relationship or go is a classic one. Right.
Speaker 1: I've been in that position, and I realized that a
Speaker 1: lot of the pain that I felt in that position
Speaker 1: was the fact that I was always pressuring myself that
Speaker 1: I should know the answer, I should be able to
Speaker 1: figure this out, and I would get very down on
Speaker 1: myself because I didn't know the answer. And the reason
Speaker 1: I didn't know the answer is because these questions are hard.
Speaker 1: All the ones I read are very difficult. It's hard
Speaker 1: to know what the right answer is in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. And it makes me think of this idea
Speaker 1: of being okay with questions. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: um the Buddhist teacher Suzuki, who says, in the beginner's mind,
Speaker 1: there are many possibilities, but in the experts there are few.
Speaker 1: And so some of these questions, there are many many
Speaker 1: possibilities in them, and we don't have to figure them
Speaker 1: out today. It's okay to not know. It's okay to
Speaker 1: be wrong, it's okay to make mistakes, to mess it up.
Speaker 1: You know, we are still learning, we are still walking
Speaker 1: the path. At any point. This is all part of
Speaker 1: the process of becoming, of living, of being humans in
Speaker 1: the world today. So I encourage you. Questions are great,
Speaker 1: but I encourage you to relax into the questions and
Speaker 1: allow your life to proceed and allow yourself to be
Speaker 1: in your life and live your life. Even if you
Speaker 1: don't have and probably don't have the answers today, life
Speaker 1: can still be wonderful right where it is without figuring
Speaker 1: it all out. If you like this mini episode for
Speaker 1: Patreon supporters, I do an extra one every month. You
Speaker 1: can go to one you feed dot net slash support
Speaker 1: to sign up and you'll get a free mini episode
Speaker 1: every month. Thank you for listening. Another episode out on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: as always, h