Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Since Erik Erikson’s work on the eight stages in life development, the notion of a progression through a series of different periods in one’s life has become widely known. Erikson felt that each stage presented its own particular task and that, by adjusting to the challenges of each age, we developed psychological maturity. His insights are rich and have helped us recognize that life is not fully finished by the time we reach young adulthood.
Erikson reminds us that we are contunally a “work in progress” and that life presents itself to us as an unfolding mystery to which we can respond or, in the face of which, we can shut down. The last stage of our journey, which we are in at the end of life, reflects this choice. We can arrive at either integrity or despair. One reason for despair is the fact that we can look back on our life and realize that we did not take all the opportunities presented to us. He also believed that failure to live fully at one stage led to accumulating difficulties in later stages.
One thing that this stage theory of life can help us see is that we are somewhat always in transition. As well as the developmental stages which present their challenges and tasks, we all have unique situations which present us with choices. We are called to respond to a challenging work situation, a medical report, a new addition to the family, a challenging travel schedule, or moving apart from a best friend. We are always between the situation which was yesterday and today’s new situation. Thus we have to develop a spirit that is open, that is at ease with always adjusting. Adjusting means that we are not always 100% sure of who we are, and that we have to make choices based on where we find ourselves. And sometimes the choice is whether we dare to take a risk based on a deep awareness in our heart or whether we play it safe.
What is needed then is an openness to what life – as a journey – presents in each stage, and in each moment. In some ways this is our only moment of being alive. As Erikson reminds us, living this moment and this opportunity to the full will lay the basis for a full life and develop a philosophy of celebration, removed from worry and too much concern about a fixed destination. It is better to live these instants fully than lose them in an attempt to manage life in its entirety. We need to dream, and live in a way that produces astonishment rather than predictability.
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
May Sarton
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard
Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.
Anthony Robbins
Sometimes we can be fixed on our notion of how a thing should be and be in danger of throwing away the richness of how a thing actually is. What we need at times is the courage to embrace life as it is actually unfolding, and not try and shape it to some idea which we think it should be.
The idea of love is not love
The idea of the ocean is neither salt nor sand;
The face of the seal cannot rise from the idea
to stare at you,
to astound your heart
Mary Oliver
The word Lent, as I said before, comes perhaps from the Old English and refers to the lengthening of the days in Spring. However, the latin name for this period is quadragesima meaning “forty”, and reminds us that one of the inspirations for this period is the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert. So one way we can regard this period is that it reminds us to simplify, in a more focused way, in order to reflect upon the real priorities in our lives. Remove clutter, spand less time in front of the TV or internet, set aside time for reflection, writing, and walking.
“It seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”
Edward Abby, Desert Solitaire
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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