i was feeling a bit down yesterday although i couldn’t really pinpoint why. i have a theory but i don’t want to explore that idea anymore. (that sounded so cryptic didn’t it?) anyway, i was listening to my ost&broadway playlist and the beauty and the beast soundtrack (the tv series ha) came on. and for the first time i really listened to this excerpt from Rainier Maria Rilke (Letter8)…

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us, once, beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything that’s terrible is in it’s deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

So you must not be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand, it will not let you fall. 

i cheered up a bit after this. perhaps it was the beast’s sexy voice that made me better but i think the last sentence gave me hope. life has not forgotten me!

i read the entire letter and two more passages hit me:

We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all. But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization. 

Don’t observe yourself too closely. Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame (that is: morally) at your past, which naturally has a share in everything that now meets you.

to read the entire letter: Rainier Maria Rilke – Letter 8

to download the mp3: OST – Beauty & the Beast of Love and Hope