Anticipate all parting, as if it were behind
you, like the winter that’s now passing.
For under winters is one winter so endless,
only in overwintering can your heart overcome…
M. R. Rilke
Parting is distressing. Sad, heavy thoughts of leaving places and faces behind. Especially the latter I guess. Parting always requires mourning, and after mourning comes burying, forgetting, letting go, and a host of other rituals man has invented since the dawn of time to assuage the pain that gnaws at the heart in every experience of parting.
Anticipating is waiting transformed. Parting as anticipation is just like the brimming up of exhilaration that fills one's breast as he nears the end of a chapter of a really engrossing book, knowing that the plot is just beginning to thicken and that he is in for some surprising twists and turns in the pages that follow. When seen in the light of anticipation, parting is transformed. It becomes a celebration, a lavish and abundant banquet where friends feast on a collective harvest of strengthened bonds and deepened loves. Parting as anticipation is a looking forward to greater times ahead.
I choose to look at this moment of parting with a pair of anticipation-colored specs.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteWho is the translator of the Rilke quotation above?
Hello! Sorry for my VERY late reply. The quotation above came from the book: "The Essential Rilke, Selected and Translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann." Thanks for dropping by.
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