In the Western/American culture in which I live, we are impatient. We do not like being in the space between what was and what is to come, sitting in the Irish mist, I call it, because it reminds me of time spent in Ireland when I could not see around the next curve in the road or in my life; those time after something has ended and before the next begins.
We want it now and we want to know the whole picture, not just the beginning. But life is full of those spaces between here and there, and seldom are we shown the second step until we actually take the first one, which we are only shown after patiently spending time in quiet of the mist.
After talking with a friend about sitting in the Irish Mist, she sent me this poem:
I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves
as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet
Rilke’s poem speaks elegantly to spending time in the Irish mist, moments of needed reflection that help us let go of that which was and grow into that which is to come.
Where I live in a rural woods, patience comes easier for me than it used to when I lived in the city. Perhaps it’s age as well that allows me to sit quietly and watch the morning mist rise from the farm fields on the other side of the trees, bare now from fall’s winds. Perhaps even, it’s a bit of wisdom that allows me to reflect on that which was, to heal and clear its wound or un-attach from its joy, so when the time is right, I can move into the next phase of my life, allowing the next creation to unfold in Divine time and not on my timetable.
If we are able to do this—allow our lives to unfold naturally rather than push them—that which comes is ready for us, as are we, created by our dreams and built by our patience.