learn to love the questions

i came across this poem yesterday that is one of my favorites.  back when i was in high school, my mentor teacher, norm vandal said in one of my classes to "learn to love the questions." i remember having so much trouble wrapping my brain around that thought when he said it.  i liked answers.  i feared the unknown.  i had a plan, and i was sticking to it!  little did i know how much this piece of wisdom would shape who i eventually have become more than 7 years later.  norm was the first person who told me that i would make an exceptional teacher and actually made me believe it, and for that, i am eternally grateful. 

even though i always remembered what norm said in class that day (i recall him using me as his "teaching moment" to illustrate how so many of us rarely do love the questions. and he could read me like a book and knew how uncomfortable uncertainty made me - which of course embarrassed little high school me to no end) it wasn't until years later when i was in college, that i came across this rainer maria rilke quote that everything seemed to click.  as i read it over, i realized how incredibly yogic it sounds.  

"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 seek the answers, which cannot be given to you 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


i sense i will be weaving in a portion of this reading into one of my classes.  in the meantime: i hope that this speaks to you.  

xxx

blessed.

i've taught four classes in the last five days.  and i will get to teach for the next three days in a row.  i am so blessed and thankful to be able to share my practice and my love of yoga with others.  (though i could and normally would) go into a tail spin about how many teachers, who i aspire to be like, knock out 7 classes in only two days rather than a lengthy eight... i won't).  i am simply going to enjoy my classes as they come and keep on spreading love, light and joy to anyone who rolls a mat down in my class.  

xxx