Krista Tippett, host of the radio show and podcast On Being, laments how often we use words only to state opinions or win arguments. In this short clip, she reflects on the strength that comes from resisting the urge to rush toward clear answers, especially in a world facing vast, unresolved crises. She draws on Rilke’s invitation to “try to love the questions themselves” as both a spiritual practice and a practical discipline for living.

Tippett suggests that the quality of the questions we carry quietly shapes our lives and our societies. She contrasts combative, reductive questions with ones that are generous, open, and morally imaginative.

She offers a challenge I decided to take up: choose a living question at the intersection of personal and public life, write it down, and commit to “living” with it for a month or a year, allowing discovery and new possibility to emerge over time. One came to me easily—a patterned thought and response I’ve noticed surfacing more often. Now, when it arises, I pause and ask, “Does this thought nourish anything I actually value?” It's clarifying to notice how often it doesn't.

Thank you, Krista. You’re right. There is real power in living the questions.

"Rilke’s writing entered my life in my early 20s. I spent part of that in divided Berlin. And I think that when I was young, what it spoke to in me was having grown up in a world where there were answers for everything. And the answers felt too small. This gave me permission to keep stretching the way I felt called to stretch.

"But it has stayed with me my entire life. Across time, this has become a discipline woven into my work and my sense of calling, and into the community of conversation and searching and living that is On Being. And it has never felt more directly useful and relevant than in this post-2020 world."

Podcast: Krista Tippett: Living the Questions

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