Golden Key Questions
Find the golden key question. Unlocking meaning, self-discovery, and connection often is a function of living out the questions (see Rilke’s poem at the bottom of this writing). In order to live out the questions – instead of rushing to answers that we don’t have enough information and experience to even truly arrive at – it is crucial to find the exact wording of the question that lights something up inside each of us.
The phrasing and word choice is unique to each of us. You tend to know when it hits for you when you stumble upon it, particularly with practice, deepened awareness of self, and increasing ability to experiment. There is a sensation, an “oh!,” a “huh that’s something…” moment when the phrasing and wording lands – these are signs we’ve arrived at a golden key question.
These golden keys have the ability to unlock doors inside of us, opening more spaces and more honesty in living soulfully. Then, we live out the golden key question – let it play through you in your daily life, in your practices. Try it on like a costume. Wear it like glasses, allowing stimuli to be received through the lenses of this question. Experience the alchemy within you.
So here is what I am asking this week:
How do I continue living front-footed without rushing ahead?
“Front-footed” is a term I learned from one of my Shakespeare teachers, the exquisite vocal coach Stephen Kemble. Stephen is based in London, UK and vocal coached at the Royal Shakespeare Company for many years, as well as under Cicely Berry.
Stephen used “front-footed” both to describe how to approach Shakespeare’s famous iambic pentameter – to feel with the text, to be in the rhythm, and not to fall behind or rush ahead – as well as a way to live life. To be on the waves of life, not falling back into the heels and not rushing ahead. To live “front-footed” is to be present, in the unknown, and to let what is here fly out of us. This way of living and acting is vulnerable, authentic, and surprising (for both others and ourselves!).
How do I continue living front-footed?
I will live this question through my practices of voice, movement, bodywork, and somatic therapy; in my changed environment from the city of London to the mountains of Appalachia; and in my ethos of listening deeply.
What is your golden key question these days?
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And here are the words from Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”