living the questions

Bye, April. On the (almost) eve of the fifth month of this rapidly disappearing year, I want to share a quote. The past month has been marked by my struggles to come to terms with some aspects of my leaving in two months. I won't go into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that, like most struggles in my life, I find the answers I am seeking among the pages of my slim, hardbound copy of Letters to a Young Poet, by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Perhaps my favorite quote from this volume is the one also most applicable to this month's quandaries, and for all those who aren't familiar with Letters to a Young Poet, here it is:

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day."

Aside from learning to love the questions as I live them, I am also trying to chill out. The data collection portion of my research is winding down, and I have already begun the process of analysis (right now, qualitative coding) - yet another unfamiliar research task that I am teaching myself as I go.

I currently have a friend visiting - someone I haven't seen since we were last together in Peru - and a handful of other friends will be dropping by before my time on the island is up. So I'm also trying to relax a bit more and make a deliberate attempt to enjoy myself, as hard as some of the aforementioned questions are. Even recent weekend trips to the gorgeous beaches of the northern Samana peninsula, Cabarete, and to 27 Charcos, a charming set of 27 waterfalls cascading down a mountain up which you can hike before jumping/sliding your way down, were mediocre for me because of these struggles. But I am determined to return to the U.S. on June 24 relaxed, calm, and peaceful - ready for medical school!