On living the questions

and Knowing and Not Knowing and Rilke and pulling weeds

I had a whole post written and ready to send to you yesterday, all about redemption stories*. (It may or may not have been inspired by an episode of The Bear). But for whatever reason, I couldn’t hit send. There was a muffled little voice in the back of my head telling me not to.

It wasn’t a particularly personal post, but I usually pay attention to that little voice telling me to pause on things, convinced that they’re wise and somehow tapped into the Knowing. If she tells me to not send the thing, I usually don’t send the thing. Or, I’ll play little games with her, like, “If I hit send on this but the page doesn’t load, I’ll take it as a sign that I shouldn’t post it.”

And that’s good and fine and very self-protective (if not an example of giving away my agency), and as someone who used to chronically over-share, I’m glad that little voice exists. I’m glad I’ve learnt how to listen to her, because usually, she’s just looking out for me.

But I also know that over the past couple of years I’ve dialled into that voice more and more often. I’ve become way more afraid. Afraid of failing. Afraid of f*cking up. Afraid of being too seen. Afraid of wanting it too much. Afraid of phoning it in. Afraid of trying something new and being found lacking.

It’s partly ego, for sure. But not the good kind of ego. Not the one that lets me take up space. It’s the ego that tells me I have too much to lose if I get it wrong, so better to stay small. The toxic, needling kind of ego.

It’s partly because my world feels much smaller than it used to as well. I live with these debilitating periods of fatigue and pain that come on suddenly and can leave me wrecked for weeks at a time, so I say no to virtually all opportunities and new ideas and coffees with friends, never sure of when the next episode will strike and afraid I’ll have to cancel everything. Because there’s fewer stakes, they all feel higher.

It’s also partly flat-out fear of trying new things. I never used to be like that. Not Knowing used to be something I embraced in healthy doses, but over the past few years I feel like it’s taken over everything.

So, when I got up this morning and read this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke’s book Letters to a Young Poet over on

Little Things

by Ali Vingiano, it felt like kismet.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present, you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.”

I think much of my fear comes from not knowing things and much of my overwhelm comes from trying to find the answers — even if they don’t exist yet.

If we look at my work as an example, I have absolutely no idea how a piece of writing will be received, if I’ll ever finish my novel, or if any of it is good enough for an agent or a publisher. And I spend an inordinate amount of time in that Not Knowing, searching for answers or assurances or some sign that it will all be okay.

But the reality is that the answers to those questions will not exist until I do the thing. Until I write the piece, finish the manuscript, talk to an agent, pitch a publisher.

I’m trying to bypass the Not Knowing in order to avoid the fear that comes with it. But the fear is the Not Knowing.

What would happen if I embraced it instead? If I, as Rilke suggests, “live the question” for a time? Not as something to be afraid of, but something to be comfortable with?

Obviously, I don’t know the answer. But I do know what happened yesterday, which is why reading the Rilke quote this morning felt so fateful. Yesterday, when I realised I was afraid, I accepted it. I didn’t hit ‘Send’. I went outside and pulled weeds for a while. I reconnected with my neglected veggie garden. I let myself think about fear and not think about fear and I went about life. I let the sun warm my shoulders and I ate dinner with my family and I commented on how beautiful the moon was and I went to bed early with a headache. I lived. And then, this morning… Rilke and Not Knowing and these words and this clarity.

Are they related? Is it a coincidence? Is there really an answer we can arrive at by living the questions?

I don’t know.

But I think there is a Knowing. And there is definitely a Not Knowing. Neither of them are right. Neither of them are wrong either. Maybe it’s just a matter of timing.

I’m currently…

Feeling so excited for Kate Mildenhall, whose excellent excellent third book, The Hummingbird Effect, was released in Australia this week. I have long been entranced by the idea of the invisible threads that bind us across space and time, and this epic book dives into that idea in the most amazing ways. Grab a copy from your local bookshop or ask your library to order a copy.

Looking outside at the most beautiful winter day. All I want to do is sit in the sun or maybe prune the roses, but alas, there is work to do. Maybe another quick gardening break though?

Wishing my brain fog would go away (and that there was a different term for brain fog. It seems too cutesy for something so…sucky.)

Listening to Metallica of all things. I haven’t listened to them since high school but Ben recently told me that they play ‘Ecstasy of Gold’ by Ennio Morricone at the beginning of every concert which is just the most amazingly epic track from ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, which then sent me down a very unexpected rabbit hole of Metallica albums.

Working on the details of my next online retreat. All paying subscribers get access to my quarterly retreats, and this one is going to be all about Writing as Self-Care. Subscribe today and you’ll get instant access to my previous retreats (Values and Rhythms) and the next retreat will be delivered to your inbox when it launches next month.

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Here’s to you this weekend, and to this wonderful corner of the internet. Thank you for being here, for reading this and for meeting me and my weird brain where it is.
Brooke xx

(*I’ll post it next week. It’s actually pretty good and any time I get to talk about stories and TV shows and movies and character arcs is a good time!)