12.16.2011

Words of Love Day 16

We can't believe we have only 9 days left on our countdown!  (This also means we need to get a move on with our last minute Christmas preparations!)  Rainer Maria Rilke is a favorite of us Shi Shi girls, and his series of "Letters to a Young Poet", published after his death, provides a particularly interesting window into his beliefs on a range of subjects from loneliness, to career choices, to marriage.  It's a passage on marriage we've selected to share with you.  Love, love, love!


“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.” - Rainer Maria Rilke 

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