“I think one of the great questions we can ask ourselves
is, What is my question?  What is the question I am living,
what question have I been living since the moment I was born,
what is the essence of the pattern, and what’s the fierce,
leading edge of that pattern and the way it’s leading me out
to the rest of my life?”

        -David Whyte, Midlife and the Great Unknown, 2:32

    David Whyte alludes to Goethe’s poem, “The Holy Longing”
(“Selige Sehnsucht”):

    I praise what is truly alive
    And what longs to be burned to death…
    …And so long as you haven’t experienced this,
    To die and so to grow,
    You are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.