acht, neun

For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, 

something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us

withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.

We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, 

and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered.

The more still, more patient, and more open we are when we are sad.

It becomes always clearer that this is at bottom not something that one can take or leave.

We are solitary.  We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so.

That is all.  But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes, even to begin by assuming it.

For it is not inertia alone that is responsible 

for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, 

indescribably monotonous and unrenewed; it is shyness before any sort of new, 

unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope.  

But only someone who is ready for everything, 

who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, 

will live the relation to another are something 

alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own experience.

If there is anything morbid in your processes, 

just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; 

so one must just help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress.

Do not observe yourself too much.

Do not draw too hasty conclusions from what happens to you; 

let it simply happen to you.

Let us wait what comes.

And for the rest, let life happen to you.

Believe me: life is right, in any case.

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; 

that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.