If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us t… - Rainer Maria Rilke

It must be immense, this silence, in which sounds and movements have room, and if one thinks that along with all this the presence of the distant sea also resounds, perhaps as the innermost note in this prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish that you are trustingly and patiently letting the magnificent solitude work upon you, this solitude which can no longer be erased from your life; which, in everything that is in store for you to experience and to do, will act as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, rather as the blood of our ancestors incessantly moves in us and combines with our own to form the unique, unrepeatable being that we are at every turning of our life.

First a childhood, limitless and without renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy. Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery, and collapse into temptation and loss. Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender, and thrusts upon others that which it suffered. Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner and conqueror, blow by blow. And then alone in cold, light, open space, yet still deep within the mature erected form, a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one... Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.

All feelings that concentrate you and lift you up are pure; only that feeling is impure which grasps just one side of your being and thus distorts you. Everything you can think of as you face your childhood, is good. Everything that makes more of you than you have ever been, even in your best hours, is right. Every intensification is good, if it is in your entire blood, if it isn't intoxication or muddiness, but joy which you can see into, clear to the bottom.