Lately, the path is not so clear. But the beauty that surrounds me everyday is and I am grateful to see much of that while out running. Running gives me the chance to know my body’s mind and sometimes the pictures I take on a run give me insights later on. In retrospect, this week’s images have given me a mirror.

There are times when what I’d really like is startling clarity like the crisp right angles of electric power lines coming into a transmission tower and out:

Sometimes, I can see that clarity taking shape in the distance, with direction, far on the horizon. I know it is possible to get there though I may not know how:

But more often, the invisible order of an organic structure prevails and I cannot see it. Not to worry though, the view is still breathtaking and there is joy in the journey:

On Thursday night’s run, the sight of kite surfers enjoying the wind reminded me to go with the wind that is blowing in my life and to live the questions as they are, to go with them and to not need answers, clarity or crispness.

But really, even this view is too definite. This one, more indeterminate, is better:

Taking advantage of those times of questions is like a kite taking advantage of the wind that the surfer cannot control but only harness. I’m reminded of the Bohemian-Austrian poet Rainier Maria Rilke (from Letters to a Young Poet, 1903):

..I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to 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.

Related articles

• 7 Teachings from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet (interruptingthesilence.com)
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• Delft explores kite power for rural Africa (gizmag.com)