In your growth, you can take no one.
Rainer Maria Rilke shares this wisdom with a young poet. In some ways, he has written this wisdom for those who long to create; who have a deep inner ache to put forth something meaningful and pertinent into this world. And that longing is flamed through countless initiations - the trials and tribulations that baptize our eyes and coronate our hearts. This interplay between pain and power is the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell talks about. Now, I not only understand, I KNOW.
I think of my journey and a deep desire to share its awe-dacity becomes present. A desire for someone to see, hear and feel the sheer craziness - my life. And no matter how many hours I spend sharing stories and details with loved ones, there always remains an insufficiency in my ability to articulate ‘it’ with completeness. And it is towards this insufficiency Rilke is guiding me to own and turn into my treasure. No one can truly know Mansi's journey. Only I can. Others can experience glimpses of it- chapters, and songs can be enjoyed as medicine, but this is an exclusive one-time-only ‘broadway’ performance for me, by me. This journey of becoming is life’s most exclusive gift to me.
This solitary exclusiveness is worthy- a sacred solitude of the highest proportions. As life enlivens me, it also enlivens itself through me. My life is my true spiritual copyright.
Yet, this desire to be witnessed is also sacred and worthy. My life is nothing without it being witnessed. The ‘I Am’ needs ‘You’ to exist. This true spiritual copyright is then more a creative-commons. My life is the creative-commons of all life. To then expand on Rilke’s words - In your growth, you can take no one, but your growth belongs to everyone.
Today with life, in life, for life - I am grieving. I am love. I am transforming. I am powerful. I am awake. I am alive. Fully. I am the life of the universe. And this aliveness belongs to you just as much as me.
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‘In your growth, you can take no one’ - Words by Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet.
A self-portrait to capture the singular spark of magnificence that is embodied in my unique aliveness. “I am not extraordinary, it is my life that is extraordinary” - Ruth Pittard
