
Life’s a twisted story. One minute, you’re on top of the world. The next, you’re lying face down in the dirt wondering what the hell went wrong. That’s the gig.
And no amount of running around looking for answers is going to change that. I’ve spent half my life chasing meaning—reading books, drowning in philosophy, thinking I could make sense of it.
And then one day, I pick up a book by Rainer Maria Rilke, and he smacks me in the face with something simple and brutal.
He says, “Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”
And you know what? It hit me like a brick.
But here’s the thing: when a guy like Rilke says something like that, he doesn’t mean it in some fluffy, new-age way where you just sit back, meditate, and everything’s peachy.
Hell no.
What Rilke’s really saying is that you have to stop fighting everything.
You have to stop trying to make sense of the nonsense, trying to force life into the mold you want.
Sometimes, life will knock you down just to see if you can get back up. And that’s where the real shit happens.
But here I am, middle-aged, sitting in my apartment after another goddamn day of copywriting, trying to figure out how to apply this to my own miserable life.
Is it pleasant? Not at all. But I think maybe that’s the point.
Rilke knew this wasn’t going to be some easy, romantic idea.
He knew that life was chaos, and trying to control it was like trying to tame a wild animal. It’ll bite your hand off if you get too close.
Amor Fati: Embracing the Beautiful Chaos
So what’s Rilke really saying with this Amor Fati—the love of fate?
It’s not some soft, spiritual BS. Rilke isn’t asking you to light a candle and sing Kumbaya in the face of disaster.
He’s telling you to let the storm roll over you and then stand up and laugh in its face.
He says it in another letter: “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” I mean, Jesus Christ, Rilke, you really want me to love the questions?
It’s like, every time I get a bill I can’t pay, I want to curse the world and scream, “Why me?” But the real question should be, “Why not me?”
Because nothing about this life is supposed to be fair. You don’t get to pick and choose your battles.
And maybe that’s the secret we all ignore: life doesn’t owe you a goddamn thing.
A few years back, I lost a client. One minute, I’m sitting in my dingy office, high on coffee and the thought of getting paid, and the next, I get a call.
The client’s pulling out, the contract’s void, and my next paycheck goes up in smoke. I sat there, staring at the screen, wondering what the hell I’d done wrong.
I wanted to scream, punch a hole in the wall, but instead, I just laughed. Because it was all so ridiculous. You plan, you fight, you hustle, and life just smacks you upside the head like it doesn’t even know your name.
But that’s the thing. It doesn’t have to.
Life is Nothing but Fortune: The Random Dance of Fate
Fortune. We all think we deserve it. We all think, at some point, we’ve earned it. When something good happens, we take it for granted, like we’re the special ones.
But when something bad happens, we ask, “Why me?” Like the universe has it out for us.
Rilke cuts through that bullshit: “There is no ‘good’ fortune or ‘bad’ fortune, only fortune.” It’s all the same. It’s all random. And if you sit there judging it, you’re missing the point.
There was a time, not too long ago, I spent hours—literally hours—chasing after an idea, trying to make it work, convinced it was the ticket to my big break.
I was writing, rewriting, praying, all of it. And then—nothing.
Silence. I spent days, weeks, bitter as hell. Until I realized that in the grand scheme of things, my idea didn’t matter. Life doesn’t owe me success. It doesn’t even care if I’m happy. I could work my ass off, but it’s still up to the universe.
And the universe doesn’t give a shit.
I think of Dostoevsky, how his characters always fought against the abyss, like it was a battle worth winning.
And sure, there’s something heroic about it, right? But in the end, the abyss just stared back. It didn’t care. And maybe that’s the point: life doesn’t care.
Table 1: Control vs Acceptance
Control | Acceptance |
---|---|
You fight the chaos. | You let the chaos come and go. |
You believe you deserve things. | You understand that you deserve nothing. |
You expect things to go according to plan. | You expect nothing, and yet, everything happens. |
You hold on to expectations. | You surrender to whatever life throws at you. |
What’s the Point?
You can read all the books you want, chase after all the philosophies, but deep down, you’re staring into the abyss, wondering, “What’s the goddamn point?”
Nietzsche’s voice echoes in the back of my head, his quotes reverberating in my skull like a drumbeat. It doesn’t make a difference.
Life’s a big, ugly circus, and we’re all just clowns waiting for the next punchline. Camus, too, warned about the absurdity of it all. There’s no meaning in life, just a long, drawn-out wait for the inevitable.
But somewhere in that darkness, Rilke shows up with his quiet, unassuming words: “Try to love the questions themselves.” That’s where the trick lies.
Maybe the point isn’t to find meaning. Maybe the point is to stop looking for it.
A Little Personal Tale: The Battle with Fate
A few years back, I was standing at the bar, nursing a drink, the usual fight with the void going on in my head.
I was in a bad spot—fighting with a woman I loved, watching my job slip away, and feeling like I was drowning in a sea of nothingness.
And then, out of nowhere, an old friend walked in. We hadn’t spoken in years. He sat down, looked me over, and asked, “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
I could’ve launched into a diatribe about fate and all the shit that had gone wrong in my life. But instead, I just laughed. Because, at that moment, I realized what Rilke meant.
My life was happening, whether I liked it or not. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t fair. But it was mine.
And sometimes, you have to accept that it’s not your job to fix everything.
It’s your job to live it.
Rilke vs. the World: The Struggle to Let Life Happen
You’ve got all these other voices—loud, angry voices—that aren’t so keen on surrender.
Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky. They’re all out there, holding their torches, screaming, “Fight! Resist!”
They make it sound like we’re just supposed to stand in front of a hurricane and ask it to blow harder.
It’s exhausting, really. They want us to create meaning in a world that seems so dead-set on making everything meaningless. They tell you that if you don’t make your own purpose, you’re weak. You’re just another sheep waiting to be slaughtered.
I get it. I really do. But let’s be real: You can only fight for so long before you start looking at the walls and wondering if maybe the walls have a point. Maybe you’re the one who’s been doing it wrong.
Here’s where Rilke’s got the edge, and I hate to admit it: In a world that’s constantly trying to choke the life out of you, maybe the only thing left to do is to let it happen.
Not fight it, not resist it, not try to shape it into some clean little narrative that suits your pathetic, fragile ego.
Just let it tear through you, drag you through the mud, and see what sticks. And yeah, that sounds like a sucker’s bet, but maybe that’s the point.
You see, the difference between Rilke and those other guys is simple: Surrender doesn’t mean you’ve given up. It means you’ve found the one thing that’s harder than fighting—accepting.
Most of us aren’t strong enough to fight every damn day. Most of us don’t even want to. We’re too tired. Too beaten down. So, why not just let go? It doesn’t mean you stop trying. It doesn’t mean you sit on your ass waiting for life to spoon-feed you something sweet.
It means you stop pretending you’re in charge of everything. Hell, you’re not. We’re all just a bunch of meat sacks stumbling around, trying to make sense of this.
But I’m not completely sold. Not yet. And neither is Rilke. He had his demons. He wasn’t just a soft, peaceful poet who thought all we had to do was sit back and bask in the beauty of the universe.
The dude was tortured. He knew the pain, the chaos, the noise that’s always threatening to swallow you whole. And yet, he still believed there was something to be gained in just letting it happen.
But what about those other guys? Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre—they sound like they’ve been punched in the gut so many times they’ve lost track.
They want to fight and wrestle with fate until their knuckles bleed, but sometimes that fight only makes you more tired, more empty.
Sometimes, the harder you struggle, the more you realize it’s pointless.
Table 2: The Fighters vs. Rilke’s Quiet Surrender
Philosopher | Key Idea | Opposition to Rilke |
---|---|---|
Nietzsche | Will to Power, Nihilism | Life’s meaningless, fight for your own power, don’t let go. |
Camus | Absurdism: Life has no inherent meaning, but we must create it | Struggle to create meaning, don’t passively accept the void. |
Sartre | Existentialism: You create your own essence | Rejects fate, insists you make your own path, don’t surrender. |
Dostoevsky | The suffering of life is inevitable and can be overcome through faith | Faith requires struggle; don’t let suffering be in vain. |
So, yeah. There they are. The warriors, shouting in the wind, holding onto the idea that the struggle gives life meaning.
They’d spit on Rilke’s idea of “letting life happen” because it sounds too soft, too passive. And maybe it is. But maybe that’s where Rilke’s real insight lies.
Because, in the end, none of us gets to choose how this shit plays out.
You can’t control the people who screw you over, or the times that break your back. And maybe that’s the hardest part: giving in.
Not to life’s demands, not to its cruel punches, but to the fact that you can’t control everything. That’s the lesson, I think.
But the real question is: Can you find peace in surrendering to something that’s way bigger than you? Or are you going to keep grinding, keep battling, even when the battlefield keeps changing and you’re out of breath?
I don’t know. I’m still figuring it out. But for now, I’ll stick with Rilke.
Maybe not all the way, maybe not completely. But just enough to know that sometimes, maybe the best thing to do is sit back, light a cigarette, and let the storm do what it’s gonna do.
The hardest part? Just being okay with it.
Wrapping It Up in the Dark
So, here we are, at the end of this miserable journey.
And here’s the kicker: you can’t control it. You can’t make life into something it’s not.
All those nights I spent chasing meaning, all those days of thinking I had a handle on things—it was all just another way to distract myself from the real issue: we’re all just waiting to die.
Rilke’s words sting because they remind me that everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve lost, it’s all just part of the mess.
But here’s the thing: maybe it’s not about winning. Maybe it’s about how we let life rip us apart and how we get up afterward.
Maybe the choice—the only choice—we have is whether we accept the chaos or let it crush us.
And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it crush me without putting up one hell of a fight.
So, yeah. Life’s a slap, but it’s ours. And how we face it? That’s what matters. Whether you’re Rilke, Nietzsche, or some burnt-out copywriter sitting in a shitty apartment in the middle of nowhere, the truth is simple: life doesn’t care.
It’s happening. The real question is whether you’ll let it or not.
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