Cartas A — Un Joven Poeta Rainer Maria Rilke

He isn't romanticizing misery. He is saying that the voice you need to listen to is the one that only speaks when you are alone.

Permission to be slow. Permission to be unsure. Permission to be lonely without being broken. Permission to trust that the ache you feel is not a sign that you are doing life wrong, but that you are, perhaps for the first time, doing it right. cartas a un joven poeta rainer maria rilke

We think love is about finding someone who completes us. Rilke thinks that is a disaster. He isn't romanticizing misery

Letters to a Young Poet is not a self-help book. It won't give you ten steps to happiness. In fact, it might make you more uncomfortable with the shallowness of your daily life. Permission to be unsure

Rilke’s most famous advice is also his most radical: “If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.”

Are you sad? Don’t drink it away. Sit in it. Rilke insists that sadness is not an enemy. It is a season. It is the soil going fallow so that roots can grow deep enough to survive the winter.

Written between 1903 and 1908, these ten letters are not really about poetry. They are about how to live.