sabine

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 as something alive
and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence...

We have no reason to mistrust our world,
for it is not against us. Has it terrors,
they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.

(I'm falling in love with Rilke all over again, these are excerpts from Fear of the Inexplicable)