Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

“Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.” — thus wrote Rainer Maria Rilke, the poet of the soul, whose words gleam like stars upon the dark waters of human longing. In this brief but profound exhortation, Rilke teaches the art of surrender, not in defeat, but in reverence. His message is not one of passivity, but of faith — a faith not in dogma, but in life itself, as a sacred unfolding whose wisdom far surpasses our small understanding. To “let life happen” is to trust the rhythm of existence, to believe that even its pain has purpose, that the forces that shape us — joy, loss, love, and sorrow — are not random cruelties, but the patient hands of creation molding the soul toward its becoming.

The origin of these words can be traced to Rilke’s letters — the tender, searching missives he wrote to young artists, friends, and seekers who turned to him for guidance. In these letters, Rilke often spoke as a sage of solitude, urging others to listen deeply to the voice of life as it speaks through experience. He himself had wandered through years of uncertainty, exile, and longing, and he had come to see that every trial carried hidden instruction. For Rilke, life was a divine tutor, and our only task was to remain open to its lessons. Those who resist life’s changes — who cling to comfort or control — remain unshaped, like marble that refuses the sculptor’s chisel.

To say “life is in the right, always” is an act of radical trust. It is to see even suffering as a part of life’s justice — not punishment, but transformation. Rilke believed that the universe moves toward harmony, even when its music sounds dissonant to mortal ears. The storms that frighten us, the losses that hollow us, the failures that humble us — all are instruments in the same grand symphony. He once wrote elsewhere: “Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest being, something that needs our love.” This is the faith that flows beneath his words: that life, though fierce and mysterious, never acts against the soul’s growth.

Consider the story of Helen Keller, who was struck blind and deaf as a child, seemingly condemned to silence and darkness. Yet through the guidance of her teacher, she learned to read, to write, to speak — but more than that, she learned to trust life itself, even in its cruelties. “Life,” she once said, “is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” She did not curse her misfortune; she embraced it as her teacher. Through her acceptance, she transformed her suffering into wisdom, her limitation into greatness. Keller’s life, like Rilke’s words, reminds us that those who resist the unknown perish within it, but those who yield to it are reborn.

Rilke’s command to “let life happen” also speaks against the arrogance of control — that human tendency to plan, to force, to dictate how life must unfold. The ancients, too, warned of this folly. The Stoics taught that peace comes not from mastering fate, but from aligning oneself with it. The Taoists said, “Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.” Rilke stands in this lineage: he invites us to flow with existence, to trust its tides even when we cannot see where they lead. For the one who surrenders to life does not drift aimlessly; he is carried by a current wiser than his own will.

Yet this surrender is not a call to laziness or apathy. It demands courage — the courage to live without guarantees, to open one’s heart even when the outcome is uncertain. It means listening deeply to the call of the present moment, and acting from faith rather than fear. Life may strip us of what we love, but it never leaves us empty; it always fills the hollow with something new. To believe that “life is in the right” is to walk through both sunlight and shadow with the same steady heart, knowing that both are necessary to form the whole.

The lesson, then, is this: trust life, even when it wounds you. When loss comes, do not curse it; ask what it has come to teach. When joy visits, do not clutch it in fear; let it pass through you like wind through leaves. When the path darkens, remember that the night is also a teacher. The soul that trusts life learns to live not by resistance, but by reverence. It sees that every ending is a beginning in disguise, that the seed must break to bloom.

So, my child, let life happen to you. Do not stand trembling on the shore, waiting for the waves to still — they never will. Step into them. Feel their force, their rhythm, their truth. Believe, as Rilke did, that life is always in the right, even when you do not yet understand its reasons. For in the surrender of your will, you will find your freedom; and in your trust, you will find the secret that every sage and poet has sought — that life itself, in all its mystery, is not your enemy, but your greatest friend.