The Living Question

-Requires Living The Question.

In the fall of 2018, I was simultaneously navigating the choppy seas of divorce, starting grad school, starting an off-farm job while still running the farm, and learning to be a single parent half the week. For me, all of those things needed to happen. I’d figure out how along the way. 

A month into grad school, I read this quote from the Bohemian-Austrian poet Maria Ranier Rilke:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Though I’d seen the quote before, it hit home in 2018. My goal-oriented methodology that served for decades eroded in the face of my life’s complexity. Like the performer balancing half a dozen spinning plates, I was constantly shifting focus to keep everything spinning.  Gritting through or getting more efficient wasn’t enough. 

At some point, I realized that the effort is only worth it if I’m still enjoying the show myself.  

My uncertainty around how to navigate multiple challenges on multiple fronts became my first living question: “How do I balance all the priorities and still find joy? 

My revised question became: “How do I live and work in ways that bring joy, feed my family and customers, and benefit the land, animals, and community while remaining financially sustainable?” In the past eight years, that question and my answers have continued to evolve.

Living the question goes beyond poetic philosophy. Its scientific cousin is the Observer Effect— studying a phenomenon begins to change the phenomenon itself. Thoughtful inquiry begins our journey to a better answer than we can know right now.  

Some examples of individual Living Questions:

-How do I do (this job) while staying true to my values?

-Where do I need to lean into discomfort in order to learn?

Living Questions can also be powerful guides for organizations navigating change:

-“What does (our client/target audience) really need and how do we fill that need within the constraints of our programs?”

-What do we need to change internally to accomplish our mission with reduced staff and budget?  (Think of this as an organizational letting go.)

The best living questions emerge from our own internal struggles and are difficult to fully answer on the spot as Rilke warns because we don’t know what we don’t know.  Also, the answer, unlike “42,” evolves over time as we change and our understanding changes. Then the question we ask changes and the journey continues. 

The key is the mindset Rilke describes.  

Take your time.