“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
One warm, sunny day in June, while working in our yard in the shade of our gazebo, shielded by the lilac shrub, tall and dense with heavy branches bending to shade the stretch of sidewalk behind me, I heard the delightful, lilting voices of three African American girls, in early middle school judging by their speech, approach the lilacs arched over the sidewalk.Â
As they entered the shade of the arching bush, their pace slowed and their voices grew quiet. I sat unmoving in my chair, my ears opened to the sound and silences of their passage, wondering if our wild hedge might have unintentionally offended. Then one of the voices unfolded out of the quiet, as if testing fresh thoughts out loud, and asked,
“Why is it that when I walk through here, I feel like I’m in a jungle…” briefly suspending her question before thoughtfully continuing in a softened, lower voice,
“…and I kinda like it?”
My body released a slow and deep exhalation and with it, an apprehension that, until that moment, had held me. I smiled.
Young people flourish when encouraged to discover and consider new questions (“Why do I like the feeling of being in a jungle?”) that mystify, challenge, and delight. We adults do our best when we offer guidance to help young people look for and find the questions they will learn to love and live, questions that nourish their joy and wonder and lead them to meaningful ways of being, belonging, and participating in the world around them.
