Rilke Made Me Do It

A Story

I’d had every intention of going to class that morning, but then I found myself in the University Registrar’s office dropping all of my speech therapy classes. That’s where my feet took me. This was my Artist’s Way moment. My final rejection of all the expectations I had forced on myself. Being in healthcare because it was moral, because it paid well, because I knew I could do it if I had to. But I didn’t really want to.

I’d had a bout of inspirational podcasts all week and about as many things pointing me in new direction as is possible when paying attention to the universe around us. Little arrows everywhere. Quotes igniting lines of fire in my brain, churning all day, making trouble where there previously was none. In other words, disrupting all of my practical plans for myself.

Quotes like these:
“Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire”

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

And these little beads of trouble grew and swelled inside of me. The kind of trouble that I had successfully avoided for many years now, possibly even since my high school days of wanting to attend art school. But now it was unavoidable. I had ignored my voice for so long in the pursuit of becoming someone else. And these other people I was trying to be had failed to the point that I was empty except for the one person I had always been. A creator.

And so it began. The hardest part of a journey. The actual work that follows any “yes”. I had rejected one career and now here I was in another one. A self made one, on a path that while many have taken, I didn’t have the slightest clue how to perform.

I received a wonderful amount of support from my boyfriend and mother. He sent me a beautiful bouquet of iris and lilies the other day, and despite this seeming like a “just because” thing, I knew it was because of everything I had been going through.

All week I felt like I was damning myself. Choosing something that would make me poor, leave me unfulfilled, and something I would most certainly fail at.

But it’s been a couple of days, and I haven’t failed. Not yet. And I’m not sure failure is even a real thing in this work.

I have been reading “Letters to a Young Poet” at the recommendation of my friend, Liz. Rilke is addressing a young man who is both a soldier and a poet, finding himself lost in his youth and asking Rilke for advice.

This is one of the first things Rilke tells him:

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots in the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? […] And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple, “I must”, then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.

My ringing out in assent has been a slow one. The past few years I have made major moves across the country twice, and I am about to make one again. After college, I worked a string of temp jobs before finding a research position. I began taking a writing class. I also tried my hand at NaNoWriMo. These few months were some of the happiest I have had. I was working in a real full-time position, living on my own, and spending my nights writing.

But then that time-old adage came creeping in, “well this is nice, but at some point you will have to get a career.” Months later I decided to move home and attempt just that. I spent a semester unhappily slaving away at work that while at times interesting, did not tug at my heart strings. When I realized I only liked the classes as a student and that the profession didn’t interest me, I quit. This was just last week.

And so my assent has creeped up on me. It has been a string of fears and guilt and attempted solutions. Many trials followed by many errors. The thoughts of duty and practicality ringing in my ears and crushing the joy that I had thought could only belong to those who are frivolous and have their heads in the clouds.

A week and half ago, I was walking in San Franciso’s Mission District. It had been raining all day but the sky was clearing. I had a cup of Philz’s in hand. I was listening to Elizabeth Gilbert’s new podcast that explores themes from her book “Big Magic- Creative Living Beyond Fear”. The podcast features interviews between Gilbert (bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love- among other, and in my opinion better books) and real people- artists and writers who are just beginning to explore their creative lives.

In the podcast, Gilbert listens to their stories and advises them. And the intuition with which she responds to them is so heartfelt that as a listener you can tell it is genuinely helpful.

Amidst my slow meander home, she said one thing that hit me so hard I stopped walking. I had been navigating through the wet trees, and to be honest (and slightly less poetic) spitting out bits of crushed mint that kept getting in my mouth from the coffee (Philz mint mohito- try it), and she said, “If your mother was a martyr then you will be a martyr, and if your mother was an artist then you will be an artist.”

And I realized in that moment that I had been pursuing a career in speech therapy all along- as a martyr. It was in no way what I wanted to do. But in my mind it was the most correct and honorable thing I could do.

My mother had loved things once as well- art history especially. And these things she gave up in the face of practicality.

And the other thing that really struck me, was a question posed to me by the wonderful guy in my life. On the eve before the day I found myself in the registrar’s office, he asked me, “If you could do anything, regardless of money what would it be?”

More specifically, he said:
 “OK, if you could be a speech therapist tomorrow, forget school, you could just start working tomorrow as one, how happy would that make you 1–10?” I answered a 4.

Then he asked me how happy I would be if I could be a writer tomorrow.

I said a 9.

“I think you have your answer.”

And because I can feel the love of those close to me, and because my assent hasn’t shut up these past few years, through everything: moves, changing life plans, breakups, losses; I know my assent is here to stay. I know it will not be easy and that I must endure all of the heaviness of it, to paraphrase Rilke. But this need that I feel so strongly has been the one constant in my life. And I am here to greet it.