It always happens. The right words come at the right time.

I’m just about to give up an idea, a spark, a thought of what I want to do or be doing or how to do something differently and someone says something that urges me on, causes me to change, or to not listen at all and keep going – because it’s the right thing to do for me.

And then sometimes it’s not about hearing the right words at the right time, it’s about listening to whatever question I have at the moment.

In letters to a young poet, Rilke says the questions we have of ourselves may be the answer themselves.

…have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to 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. 

I don’t often like when things are challenging and yet I love the challenge. I say I want things to be easy, but I’ll never be happy if things are always easy. I say that I don’t want to question myself but to just keep going toward what I said I was going to do and then I love to question it.

Not everything that is “worth it” is challenging, but most times, for me, anything that is challenging me is “worth it”. It’s worth taking the chance to see what comes from it – what new information is about to blow my mind. It’s the difference between living and being alive. It’s a small risk in becoming more of who I am, to take the challenge to see if it’s worth it and to learn along the way.

In the last couple of weeks two people have said something to me that stopped me in my tracks, that validated my thinking in a way that surprised me that it was true to them. Are they talking about me or just an image of what they believe me to be? And then I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter, they heard something from me at the right moment in time that maybe helped them live the answer to something they were questioning, or challenged them, or was whatever it was they needed to hear.

That to me, is worth it. The challenge is to keep going.

The right words come at the right time as do the right questions.

Keep going, keep doing, keep questioning, keep listening, keep being more alive.