Doubting

A rather disturbing phenomena that I've noticed is this: The older and more educated I get, the less certain I am. The more questions I have. Tough issues grow more and more confusing and farther away from resolution. I guess this is disturbing to me because, not surprisingly, I always thought it would go the other way around. And true, there's still plenty of black and white. Maybe the world doesn't have to be as gray as I make it out to be, but certainly the grayness is there.

Which is why I simply love Rainer Maria Rilke and his words of comfort:

"Leave to your opinions their own quiet and undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth."

 "...be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and 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."

I hope that I don't use these words of comfort as an excuse to give up trying to learn the answers. "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

But, it's still nice to know that maybe I don't have to figure it all out just yet. I still have time.