What Rilke Teaches Us about Conflict and Suffering
It’s the moments of chaos that open us up.
Rainer Maria Rilke’s ideas from Letters to a Young Poet emphasize the importance of individual creativity and the pursuit of personal fulfillment through artistic expression. He encouraged the young poet to embrace solitude and to develop a deep, intimate relationship with the world, using their experiences and emotions as raw material for their work.
Rilke also stressed the value of perseverance and patience, reminding the young poet that true artistic growth is a slow and gradual process. Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a poet, this work can teach us a lot about ourselves. Let’s start with this gem:
How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
After reading this, I couldn’t help but think of Jung’s idea of the shadow. In short, the shadow is a part of us that emerges — a dragon — when something sets us off. It’s that person who talks and behaves unlike himself, like Will Smith at…
