Hello and welcome to my newsletter! I’m Jor-El and I’m a therapist and author of The Shadow Work Workbook and Self-Care for Black Men, which is out November 7 AND now available for preorder! I’m here to share my perspectives on life, mental health, and self-compassion. Thanks for being here!
WELCOME TO FALL!
It’s the season of PSLs, cardigans, apple cider donuts (yes, I’m basic) - and usually a lot of time reflecting on the year so far and plotting the path forward.
Fall naturally lends itself to a period of intellectual introspection. It’s also the time to harvest and make the final push before time slows to a glacial pace during the holiday season. Maybe it’s the longstanding conditioning of the academic calendar that still lingers in my bones. If you’re like me, you relish the idea of slowing down and going inward after the social pressures of being out and about during the brighter, sunnier months.
As I approach this time of year, I’m left reflecting on one of my favorite quotes about the uncertainty of life and the need to stay open and flexible. In the hopes that it may also inspire your next direction in life, I want to share it with you here. I find it somehow simultaneously authoritative and inspirational. Maybe it will offer you the same solace, and flexibility, it offers me.
This quote is one of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s most famous. It comes from a collection of writings of Rilke in community with a mentee in his book Letters to a Young Poet.
“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.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Uncertainty Can Also Be Valuable
As someone who really appreciates a well-laid out plans and concrete expectations, I can find it hard to feel comfortable and safe in the unknown. But, as I get older, I reflect so much more on the ongoing changes that seem natural to life, many of them unsettling and unexpected.
But, that doesn’t make them bad.
At their best, these changes can bring incredible new opportunities and places to grow. On the other hand they can also bring jarring changes in relationships, and a sense of loss of self. Through it all, I remind myself (and am offering to you) that with this challenge also comes discovery.
In this moment, perhaps you have an opportunity to release rigid expectations and embrace flexibility. Maybe this is the area in which you allow another part of yourself to emerge even though you don’t know how you will be received. Maybe this is the moment you allow yourself to take a risk, or show up for a new opportunity that you never thought possible. That’s part of what this moment is for me as I approach the publication of my next book.
But even if a new creative work isn’t in the stars for you, consider this a friendly reminder that you don’t have to have everything figured out right now. You don’t have to put pressure on yourself to live things just as you have previously imagined. Sometimes life’s most precious moments come without a concrete plan. Sometimes these moments come without an answer - maybe they come even without a solid direction or question.
These moments can still be valuable.
Questions for Reflection
What feelings come up for you when you don’t have the path laid out right in front of you?
How do you manage feelings of uncertainty? What helps you? What old patterns might hamper new opportunities?
If being rigid or stubborn has been a part of your personality until now, in what ways can you practice flexibility moving forward?