WHY QUESTIONS, RILKE, AND THE CAGE

WHY QUESTIONS, RILKE, AND THE CAGE

In a divorce, there is pain, loss and conflict. It is especially difficult for a client who does not want the divorce. There can be hurt on the inside and outside and all over. A feeling of nothing beyond that hurting person in a lonely place, stuck in a cage with no hope. And the only feeling of life may be in the tears flowing down the person’s cheeks.

Then there are the questions. Not so much the FAQs about the divorce process, but more the questions coming from the heart. Why questions:

Why this? Why now? Why me? Why?

There really are no answers, or at least no good answers. Nevertheless, there is hope. Moments like this bring to mind the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:

[B]e patient toward all that is unsolved

in your heart . . .

try to love the questions themselves. . . .

 

Do not now seek the answers,

which cannot be given you

because you would not be able

to live them.

And the point is,

to live everything.

 

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then

gradually,

without noticing it,

Live along some distant day

into the answer.

 

In downtown Grand Rapids, there is a 15-foot copper and steel sculpture by Daniel Carlson. It features a man in a cage, perhaps trapped by depression, anxiety, addiction, an unhealthy relationship. He looks out through the bars of the cage, but there is no way out. Except . . . .

Behind the man, if only he turned around–and perhaps someday soon he will–the man would find that the cage door is open. This is hope, the hope for healing, the everlasting hope, and the reason why Dan Carlson named his sculpture: “The Door Is Always Open.”

The first hope is just to make it to another day. Lay down, breathe, wait for another day to come. A brand new day. A day to wipe away tears. To find joy and live love. But that’s another day, and this is today. And today, it’s okay to cry.

The pain, loss and conflict in a divorce are real, and clients are hurting. Doctors embrace the “First do no harm” motto, as well as the alternate phrasing from the Hippocratic school: “Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.” This is the same way good divorce lawyers can make a difference. Help or do no harm.