You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing _x000D_ That is more than your own. _x000D_ Let it brush your cheeks _x000D_ As it divides and rejoins behind you. _x000D_ _x000D_ The trees you planted in childhood have grown _x000D_ Too heavy. You cannot bring them along. _x000D_ Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Interpretation
Embrace the transient nature of life and let go of past burdens to fully experience the present.
Rainer Maria Rilke's quote encourages individuals to be open to their feelings and the ephemeral beauty of life. It suggests that the weight of our childhood memories and past experiences can become burdensome, and to truly live and breathe freely, we must release ourselves from these encumbrances, allowing ourselves to be part of the ever-changing flow of life.
In practice
This quote can be used during a graduation speech to encourage graduates to embrace the future.
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
We often wonder: "How will I be when I die?" The answer to that is that whatever state of mind we are in now, whatever kind of person we are now, that's what we will be like at the moment of death, if we do not change. This is why it is so absolutely important to use this lifetime to purify our mindstream, and so our basic being and character, while we can.
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. Welcome and entertain them all!
Every morning I awake torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor it. This makes it hard to plan the day. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have for saving it? In a way, the savoring must come first.
What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make others people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or at the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it must be levity.
I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French.
Everything is just now. Your existence is just now. Just timeless Now. All the rest is just a dream due to conditioning and memory.
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