I Do Believe It Is Possible To

If One Burdens The Future With One's Worries, It Cannot Grow Organically. I Am Filled With Confidence, Not That I Shall Succeed In Worldly Things, But That Even When Things Go Badly For Me I Shall Still Find Life Good And Worth Living.

By 'coming To Terms With Life' I Mean: The Reality Of Death Has Become A Definite Part Of My Life; My Life Has, So To Speak, Been Extended By Death, By My Looking Death In The Eye And Accepting It, By Accepting Destruction As Part Of Life And No Longer Wasting My Energies On Fear Of Death Or The Refusal To Acknowledge Its Inevitability. It Sounds Paradoxical: By Excluding Death From Our Life We Cannot Live A Full Life, And By Admitting Death Into Our Life We Enlarge And Enrich It.

Slowly But Surely I Have Been Soaking Rilke Up These Last Few Months: The Man, His Work And His Life. And That Is Probably The Only Right Way With Literature, With Study, With People Or With Anything Else: To Let It All Soak In, To Let It All Mature Slowly Inside You Until It Has Become A Part Of Yourself. That, Too, Is A Growing Process. Everything Is A Growing Process. And In Between, Emotions And Sensations That Strike You Like Lightning. But Still The Most Important Thing Is The Organic Process Of Growing.

That I Should Die Next Week, I Would Still Be Able To Sit At My Desk All Week And Study With Perfect Equanimity, For I Know Now That Life And Death Make A Meaningful Whole.

Thinking Gets You Nowhere. It May Be A Fine And Noble Aid In Academic Studies, But You Can't Think Your Way Out Of Emotional Difficulties. That Takes Something Altogether Different. You Have To Make Yourself Passive Then, And Just Listen. Re-establish Contact With A Slice Of Eternity.