Write the questions, live the answers...

I find myself unconsciously slipping into the usage of a morbid mantra. Countless times throughout the day I catch the myself uttering a low and guttural chant underneath my breath:

"Is this it? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?"

I look at my days and an unspoken agony wells up within me that begs to be told that this isn't all there is.

"Is this it? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?"

The unmetrical words turned over in iterative succession until the syllables sear into one another while losing none of their sting.

"Is this it? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?"

I write because I hope there's more. But, at the moment, the only thing that there's more of are questions.

Rainer Maria Rilke says that you must "go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question… Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without tryin to interpret it." He says that nothing will disturb your development "more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quest hour, can perhaps answer." Rilke implores us to "Live the questions " and "Perhaps…someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way to the answer".

I write with the intensity of the questions in my heart, not because I have the answer but because I'm searching for it…when I write, I am writing the question. Again and again, over and over, I write the question. I write the question as a means of living the question, a means of living with the question, hoping that I will "live my way to the answer".

"Is this it? Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?"