All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.
Interpretation
True companionship strengthens individual identities without losing oneself in the relationship.
Rainer Maria Rilke highlights the complexity of love and companionship, suggesting that the essence of healthy relationships lies in maintaining one's individuality. He argues that when individuals compromise their identities entirely for the sake of closeness, it can lead to vulnerability and instability, making genuine love a challenging endeavor that requires balance and self-awareness.
In practice
During a wedding toast, to emphasize the importance of individuality in marriage.
Spring has again returned. _x000D_ _x000D_ The Earth is like a child that knows many poems._x000D_ _x000D_ Many, O so many. For the hardship_x000D_ _x000D_ of such long learning she receives the prize._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ Strict was her teacher. _x000D_ _x000D_ The white in the old man's beard pleases us._x000D_ _x000D_ Now, what to call green, to call blue,_x000D_ _x000D_ we dare to ask: She knows, She knows!
Verses are not, as people think, feelings (those one has early enough) -- they are experiences. For the sake of a verse one must see many cities, men, and things, one must know the animals feel how birds fly, and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.
a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
He reproduced himself with so much humble objectivity, with the unquestioning, matter of fact interest of a dog who sees himself in a mirror and thinks: there's another dog.
The only journey is the one within.
And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been
Passive aggressors who are adept at this will have trained themselves to remain calm, while you get irritated and emotional.
That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear?
I am clearly vulnerable to these more passionate and volatile unstable relationships. I am trying to not be so vulnerable.
When you meet somebody for the first time, you're not meeting them. You're meeting their representative.
Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President's widow?
Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.
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