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Isn’t it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring’s tension, so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself.
For there is no place where we can remain.
Rilke is not speaking in terms of striving being the cause of suffering, as this beautiful passage might indicate.
Rather he speaks of the separation in death, how the living interact with the dead, and the dead with the living.
Death is real, but the mind rejects it as if it is a separation not of space but of time. As if those who have gone are saying the ordinary goodbyes of the living, driving away after Christmas, saying see you later.
Should we gather the courage to move forward, starting over after loss?
Not denying a loved, erasing a memory. But imagining they catapult us as a projectile. An arrow.
For we are because of those who came before us.
Born of love, launched into the world.
Unwittingly, but grateful.
We are miracles.
And if the idea is true, that we become the sum of the five people with whom we most interact, what is the indelible mark they leave upon us?
Because of them, do we fly?
