Monday Mantra: Have Patience

A mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of "creating transformation".

Every Monday I will post a new thought, idea, or focus for the week. When you need a breather from life, when you need a little inspiration, or when you're about to jump over the conference table and strangle your co-worker, remember the mantra.

Monday Mantra: Have Patience

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 could 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

I never think to live life in the question itself. To love it. To see where it leads me. I always want the answer. I want the who, where, what, when, and how. I just want to know. And normally, I want to know now. 

In the past, when I was in need of an answer and wasn't finding what I wanted, I would think back to something I once heard in the movie I, Robot. Will Smith plays the detective who is trying to solve the murder of Dr. Lanning, the inventor of the robots. The doctor leaves behind a hologram image of himself which is designed to assist in solving the mystery. For it to work, certain questions have to be asked. The detective doesn't figure this out for a while, but when he does the good doctor says, "That, detective, is the right question."

The right question. I can't tell you how many times I wondered what wrong questions I had been asking all along, but now- now I see it differently. All of it. There isn't necessarily one right question. There is a multitude of good questions, but without having lived the lesson you're meant to learn from them, you'll never get the key that unlocks the door. There is a wisdom that grows within you as you live through the doubts and the thoughts, and one day you'll wake up and realize you lived your way right to the point of it all. Straight to the answer.

I say this because it's happened to me. A lot, actually, and more so recently than ever before. I'll have all of these, "What if this?" and "Oh no that!" thoughts and then finally - weeks, months, years down the road - I know. Everything suddenly fits, like a giant puzzle that has finally and successfully been put together. It's always when I least expect it, when I've stopped trying to solve it, when all I've done is to live life. And that's the point of all of this- to live life, questions and all.

So I beg you, if you have anything unresolved in your heart, in your head, in you anywhere at all- have patience. There is an answer. It may not be time for you to find it right at this very moment. Now might be the time for you to learn the lesson, to grow as a person, to see exactly what you're made of, but...when the time is right you will become aware of everything you've searched out and sought after.

Find pleasure in the journey to the answer. Find peace in the wondering. Be content with every question that pops into your head and know that one day, at whatever moment you're meant to know the answer,  you will.

Believe it.

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