i can't say i'm familiar with his whole body of work, but my dad made sure my sisters and i each had our own copy of rainer maria rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. so today i was looking for a rilke quote to share with my niece who is graduating from high school this spring (i was looking for the one about living into the answers in your life) and i stumbled across this one (also by rilke):
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
if you have been reading my blog (thank you for that!) you may have noticed that i haven't posted much lately. i am currently being defeated by my electronic health record. it is tedious, time consuming, tiring and just generally a huge amount of work. it is definitely sapping my creative energy. but, BUT, i will survive, i will ultimately triumph, and i will move on to be defeated by greater things!
Rilke Rocks; my favorite of all time:
ReplyDeleteAgain and again
Some people in the crowd wake up.
They have no ground in the crowd
And they emerge according to broader laws.
They carry strange customes with them,
and demand room for bold gestures.
The future speaks ruthlessly through them.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
That so describes most of the people I know and I am thankful.