Being the Beginner

I was reading some Rilke this evening and was struck by a paragraph he wrote in one of his letters. It's as follows:

You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, 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 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, with out noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Resolve to always be beginning - to be a beginner!


How often I try to get to the end. To be or find the finished product. To hurry friendships, relationships, education, learning new skills and crafts. "Live in the questions". What a beautiful thought. And to take claim of being a beginner you can spare yourself the self-deprecation of not being good enough. Perhaps it will free you to take more risks. And what is wrong with making a mistake? Something good can be found in it for sure.
Perhaps I'm only typing this for myself. I find I haven't taken enough risks lately. How safe I feel in this new world.
I could be missing out on the next great adventure! Or at least a funny tale to tell a friend later on.