Thank you for bringing up such a profound topic! What a coincidence just today, I came across this piercing passage from Rilke about sorrow and transformation. It felt so relevant to this discussion, I had to share: "You have had many great sorrows, which have passed. And you say that this their passing, too, was difficult and discordant for you. But I beg you to consider whether these griefs have not rather gone right through you? Whether there has not been much change within you, whether, while you were sad, you did not alter in some point or other of your being? Only those sorrows are dangerous and bad which one carries with one to the company of other men in order to drown them. Like illnesses, which are superficially and badly treated, they only retreat into the background and break out again after a short interval worse than ever. They collect in one’s innermost being and are life, unlived, rejected, lost life of which one can die. If it were possible for us to see a little further than our knowledge can reach, to see out a little farther over the outworks of our surmising, we should perhaps bear our griefs with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new, something unknown enters into us. Our feelings are dumb with embarrassed shyness and everything in us retreats into the background. A stillness grows up, and the new thing, that nobody knows, stands in the middle of it and is silent" ..
It’s wild how the right words find us exactly when we need them. Thank you for creating space for reflections ♥