A Year with Rilke: With Real Love, There Are No Recipes

A Year with Rilke: With Real Love, There Are No Recipes
Excerpt:
...Love...Whoever takes it seriously, discovers that, as with death which is real, so with real love, there are no easy recipes. For both these undertakings, there are no universally agreed-upon rules. But in the same measure that we begin as individuals to explore life's meaning for us, these great things come toward us to be met and known. The claims made upon us by the hard work of love are bigger than life and essential to our unfolding, and we are seldom up to them at the outset. But if we hold steady and take this love upon us as a task and a teaching, instead of losing ourselves...his may be felt as a small illumination and step forward by those who come long after us. That in itself would be a lot.
Rome, May 14, 1904, Letters to a Young Poet