I am reading a wonderful book The Heart Aroused by David Whyte, a half Scottish, half Irish poet living in America. The whole book is a gem — full of poetic and philosophic reflections on what 9-5 corporate work does to our souls. In chapter 7, Whyte talks about Rilke’s views on chaos and order. I’ve summarised them above. It rhyming was an unexpected bonus ☺️

Rilke finds a marvellous rested simplicity by living out what we normally call ‘the balancing act’, but he would see it more truly in terms of a vibrant tension between opposites. His life is neither the notes nor the silence between the notes but the music that arises out of sound and silence felt as a living whole. Stop choosing, he says, between chaos and order, and live at the boundary between them, where rest and action move together. You can never eliminate the process of chaos from existence, but equally, you cannot completely cover over the calmness that lies at the centre of everything. Embrace reality by embracing both. Stop choosing!