Live the question

Moving to London started an internal transition that’s more than just about waking up in a different city. Maybe it’s the quarter-life crisis everyone is talking about, perhaps something else. But recently, I’ve been pondering a lot of such questions as, “Is what I am doing really what I want to be doing? Who am I? What do I actually want?” I feel that my answers to these questions — which I was so sure of for many years — have expired. But the new ones still haven’t occurred, putting me in a brooding limbo. I thought about these questions as I walked around the gorgeous botanical garden of Cambridge, UK, a few days ago. The sun was shining bright. The squirrels ran amok, and flocks of ducks walked around with their ducklings here and there. The whole experience felt surreal, almost unearthly. I am not a religious person, but I thought then that “this is what heaven must be like.”

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to do something meaningful in this world. Not necessarily big — just significant, for myself, the world, and someone. What would this contribution be? What’s something that only I can do? What’s something I can’t not do?

But we so often jump to conclusions and answers — I know I do — because we feel uncomfortable in uncertainty and rob ourselves of the profound experience of searching.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “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.”