Today I met with my mentor and shared how sad I’ve been lately. The state of the world, my own creeping depression, and then the unexpected loss of a friend last week…they’ve culminated into a giant inner emptiness.
What am I even doing here? What are any of us doing? What actually matters?
Photo by Arun Anoop on Unsplash
As I unspooled and shared the many stories that accompany my grief, she asked me to put my hand on my heart and close my eyes. Dropping into my body, away from my head and its stories, she asked me to consider…
“What is really true right now?”
My head wanted to get specific and ask her: wait, what’s true about what? Are we talking about the truth of my friend’s death, the truth of our political landscape, the truth of what feelings are present when I think about it all, or…what? I can think my way around this question all day, lady.
But somewhere deeper and away from my mind, I allowed myself to reach that pond of stillness that sits deep within us all…a place where we don’t need answers, but we can sit in the questions.
How do we bear witness to life’s heartache without collapsing beneath it?
How can we be aware of impermanence while not being fixated on inevitable endings?
How can we stay vulnerable enough to experience joy, while not being completely undone by the absolute precarity of life?
What if none of it matters? What if all of it does?
I was reminded of this quote by Rainer Maria Rilke, one that I’ve read many times but return to often:
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
There are many questions I have no answers for, and it’s okay if you don’t either. Instead of seeking the big answers, perhaps we can keep living (and asking) the smaller questions of each other.
As Mother’s Day approaches, I wonder if you’d consider asking Mom, yourself, (or someone else you love) the seven questions below that bring connection and foster understanding. They’re from the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals, my own attempt to live in the messy middle of questions and life.
We may never fully be able to grasp each other, we may never fully understand life or what the hell we’re doing here, but in living the questions, and in loving ourselves even when we don’t have the answers, we are doing the truest and most beautiful work of showing up to our precarious lives.
Lots of love,
Melissa
Seven Questions for Mom
(These questions can be modified to fit whatever relationship applies for you)
How did becoming a parent change you?
If you could start again, is there anything you would have changed about how you raised me?
What about how you raised me makes you feel proud?
What was a dream you had as a child?
What was one of the toughest decisions you’ve ever had to make?
How do you define success?
Is there anything you learned later in life that you wish you’d learned earlier?
PS: Consider writing down answers for your kids or asking questions of your family members in the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals. Find them here.
PPS: Have you read any good books in March? Do you want a book journal where you can write about them? The Book Lover’s Companion is live and there are now versions for teens and kids out too. Check them out here.
