Essay

Eleanor Hilton
Mr. Salsich
English 9
16th September 2008

Which Quote?
A Comparison of a Lincoln Quote
By Eleanor Hilton

In this world, the word time, could now be called a cliché, a word that has been used too much. It has been used so many times, in so many unnecessary places that does anyone know the real definition? It could be the time us humans wrote down and calculated, or it could be time in our lives, however we feel like measuring it, or not. The quote, “The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” Is by Abraham Lincoln, and really speaks about time, and the greatest parts of our lives, even though we might not think it.

Another poem that I love is by Rainer Maria Rilke. He is a German poet from the nineteenth century. Born in 1875, he had a different perspective on life. He must have tried to find the answers at an early age when they were not yet for him. Later in his book, Letters to a Young Poet, he probably had written this meticulous poem to pass the knowledge on. In the poem he speaks about the questions and answers in our lives. He tells us that even though we would think the questions as, ‘locked rooms’ or, ‘foreign books’, we should try to keep them anyway. We should try to love them as much as we possibly can so that someday the answers will walk into the picture. However, we must not always be thinking about the questions, which in some cases circle our minds endlessly. We should not be searching, looking or waiting for the answers to fly into our faces. Although, we should live our life as best as we can, so that eventually we will have the key to the locked room, or will be able to speak the foreign language.

Just as Abraham Lincoln speaks of time, I also believe that Rilke’s poem does too. However, at first sight, it would appear that

Rilke’s poem only spoke about questions and answers. If you dug down deeper though, Rilke’s poem would be a different story. When Abraham Lincoln says, ‘it comes […] one day at a time.’ He is talking about how much time we have to experience the world. How much time we have to live our life and enjoy it. This is like in Rilke’s poem where he talks about living the questions now. Luckily for us we don’t just have to live them now, we can live them through our whole life. This means that we have time to fully experience every part of the question. We have time to analyze and love every single word. Even though Abraham Lincoln died before Rainer Maria Rilke was born I believe they were thinking on the same wavelength.

As I have said before time, is like a cliché. However, after observing, and reading over and over again both writings, I am starting to believe that maybe having it as a cliché is a good thing, to a point. Everyone is talking and thinking about it, doesn’t this help us understand it more? Like the questions, and time, everyone is living and loving time.