Do Not Judge the Journey Too Soon

 

Dear Reader,

This morning I received a text from a friend. It contained a simple greeting and a quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke:

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen. Otherwise it will be too easy for you to look with blame... at your past, which naturally has a share with everything that now meets you.”

Good morning 😊

As I often do, I found myself considering both the meaning and the source of those words.

The quotation comes from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. His counsel is simple, yet difficult:

“Don’t be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.”

He goes on to caution against looking backward too quickly with blame, recognizing that our past naturally has a part in everything that meets us today.

With the advantage of having lived through several very different stages of life, I find considerable wisdom in that thought.

In youth and early adulthood, life seemed much more immediate to me. When something happened, I often decided very quickly what it meant and what I should do about it. Just as quickly, I changed course based upon the emotions and circumstances of that particular moment.

I remember, for example, being caught up in the passion and excitement of a relationship and asking the person I was dating to marry me.

There was little serious thought about where we might live, what our responsibilities would become, or even what choices we might someday face concerning children and family.

Life was before me, and my attitude was little more than:

Hoist the sails and full speed ahead.

Only later would I discover that enthusiasm alone does not tell us where the currents are running.

Over the next six years, my wife and I experienced disappointments and difficult times. Eventually, our marriage ended.

At the time, I did not simply see the ending of a marriage.

I saw failure.

I believed that my life as a husband had failed, and the separation and divorce seemed only to confirm the permanence of that judgment.

For several years, I allowed that conclusion to define me.

I became convinced that the harbor of marriage was closed to me and that I would never enter it again.

Looking back today, I understand that period very differently.

Perhaps when we are young, we have not yet sailed enough waters to understand the currents carrying us.

A sudden storm can look like the end of the voyage when we have not yet learned that storms pass, winds change, and sometimes an unexpected current carries us toward a destination we could not yet see.

What I once saw only as failure eventually became a teacher.

With time, I matured.

I became more thoughtful about relationships, partnership, expectations, and what I truly valued in another person.

The ending of that first marriage changed what I thought I wanted and forced me to consider what I truly needed in a life partner.

It also taught me something about humility.

A lasting partnership requires more than passion. It requires patience, compromise, honesty, forgiveness, responsibility, and a willingness to adjust the sails when the wind changes.

Had I possessed then the maturity that experience eventually provided, I might not have charted the same course.

Yet without sailing those waters, I am not certain I would have recognized calmer and wiser waters when they later came into view.

This is where Rilke's words become more than poetry to me:

“Don't be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you; simply let it happen.”

That requires reflection.

It requires patience.

And for me, it also requires faith and hope in a loving God.

The experience itself may never change, but with time, recovery, faith, and perspective, our understanding of it can.

Much of that understanding came to me through recovery and scripture.

One of the great lessons I have received through Alcoholics Anonymous is that there is a difference between examining the past and living in it.

Recovery asks us to be honest about yesterday.

We take inventory.

We acknowledge our wrongs.

We recognize where we may have caused harm.

And where possible, we make amends.

But recovery does not ask us to spend the remainder of our lives standing in yesterday's courtroom, repeatedly prosecuting ourselves for what has already been honestly faced.

At some point, we must learn from yesterday and return to the life before us.

We cannot sail today's waters while constantly staring over the stern.

Today is where I have the ability to choose what I will do next.

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this when he wrote:

“Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark…”
— Philippians 3:13–14, KJV

Paul could not literally forget his past.

He knew what he had done.

He remembered the people he had persecuted.

But after encountering Christ, he refused to believe that his past had the authority to write the final chapter of his life.

That should speak powerfully to all of us.

It is what we do from this moment forward that helps determine our next course.

No matter our age—young or old—we still have some ability to adjust the rigging, turn the wheel, and respond to the winds that meet us.

We cannot control the sea.

We cannot command the wind.

But we can choose how we respond to them.

Paul gives us further reassurance:

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God…”
— Romans 8:28, KJV

I have come to appreciate what that scripture does not say.

It does not say that all things are good.

Some experiences are painful.

Some are consequences of choices we ourselves have made.

Some leave scars.

Some storms damage the ship.

Faith does not require us to pretend otherwise.

The promise is deeper:

God can work through all things.

Even the experiences that once brought shame can, when honestly faced and surrendered to God, eventually become experiences through which we better understand another human being.

The person who once needed a hand extended toward him may someday discover that his own hand has become the one being extended.

The person who once struggled to stay afloat may someday recognize someone else struggling in the same water.

Perhaps that is one of the unexpected gifts of recovery.

We do not erase where we have sailed.

We learn from it.

And sometimes God allows the difficult waters behind us to become the very experience that helps us guide another person through a storm.

Looking back over the years, I find that life is less like a collection of separate events and more like a long voyage.

There are calm seas.

There are violent storms.

There are changing winds.

There are hidden currents.

There are strange and unfamiliar ports.

There are moments when we lose our bearings.

And there are lighthouses—people, principles, scripture, recovery, and experiences of faith—that help us find our direction again.

That is why I return to Rilke's counsel:

Do not be too quick to draw conclusions from what happens to you.

There is freedom in that.

We are not required to understand every storm while we are still inside it.

We are not required to know where every current will eventually carry us.

We are asked to live faithfully today.

To honestly examine our part.

To make right what we can.

To learn.

To adjust the sails.

And then to continue.

The “what” we are struggling through today may make far more sense after we have sailed a few more miles and ridden a few more waves.

Perhaps faith is not believing that God will always give us calm seas.

Perhaps faith is trusting that He remains with us when the sea is not calm.

And perhaps wisdom comes when we finally realize that one difficult chapter—or one difficult stretch of water—does not define the entire voyage.

So I return once more to the thought that began this reflection:

Do not judge the journey too soon.

We have not yet seen what God may do with it.

Our task is not to demand a clear horizon.

It is to trust the One who can see beyond it.

Then we adjust the sails and continue—

one day at a time,
one choice at a time,
one wave at a time.

  🙏🧘‍♂️💕🤗☮️