You might remember from my New Year’s resolutions post that I am trying to improve my writing and continue blogging. One of the ways I’m going to do this is to try using the prompts found on The Daily Post, a great WordPress blog for beginning bloggers, or for anyone who needs to mix up their writing. I’m using a daily prompt from last week for this post.
I’m a smart person. I like knowing things. I don’t like not knowing how things are going to end; it makes me feel unsafe and a little lost. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t work the way I’d like it to. It gets all screwy. You think you’re headed down one path and then you take one pretty fantastic class and all of a sudden all the “plans” you’d had made up in your head don’t look right anymore. Especially when you’re my age, certainly not a kid but not really an adult yet, but so close to making real grown-up decisions, that feeling of confusion makes for some fun anxiety.
And that’s where this quote comes in:
“I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which would not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer…”
Rainer Maria Rilke
This quote just says everything. It asks for patience and wants you to live life as it is right now. It pushes me to live in the present and quit worrying so much about doing the “right” things and wanting to know the ending. Because knowing the ending kind of spoils everything, doesn’t it? It’s a lot about letting go of control and keeping faith that it will all work out. Because it does. It will. This applies to so many things: college, careers, relationships, all of it. Trying to live by this quote has helped me a lot. Rolling with the uncertainty, as uncomfortable and anxious as it can be, has led me down an entirely different path, to different countries, to wonderful new people, and I’m more excited about what’s happening now than I was on the last “path” I thought I was on.
The next quote is similar:
“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”
Max Ehrmann, “The Desiderata”
I encourage you to find the whole Desiderata online; it’s a beautiful poem and says a lot of really wonderful things about life. But this quote has always come back to me. As you can see, it’s a lot like the first quote. But it also reminds me that part of the reason everything will work out is that I belong here, and I’m supposed to be here, and I’m here to make a difference and be a beautiful part of this world. I just might not be able to see how that works out right away.
The last one is from the Gospel of Matthew:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life…Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?…But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you- you of little faith?…So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
Mt 6:25-34, from the NRSV Catholic Youth Bible
This passage is a great reminder that God takes care of all of us. Look at how wonderful and beautiful the world is! Yes, there are bad things, but I bet if you count every bad thing, you can find five or ten good things. Really. With all of the awesomeness around us, why should we worry? Everything eventually is taken care of, even if we don’t know it.
So these are the things I turn to when I worry or get stressed out. Another thing that helps me manage is exercise. It just gets me out of my head for a while. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been trying to go on morning walks. Here’s what it looks like through Instagram (@gmtnunez):
I also manage with baking. Here are some brown sugar bacon biscuits I made with my lovely friend E. last week. They blew my mind. Eat them. Love them. Be happy.
That’s all I’ve got for now, folks! I’m going back to school next week. Wish me luck!
With love,
Gaby
Charlando 