Jim McDermott, associate editor at “America” magazine, recently invited me and others (lawyers, artists, peace activists, academics, religious leaders) to contribute a piece of advice for college graduates that he published in a special education issue.

This is what I wrote (and it definitely applies to living with depression):

Love the Questions

In college I once wrote a paper that argued that every person who has premarital sex will burn in hell. I can’t remember the grade I got, but I do remember the teacher’s note. She encouraged me to stretch my mind and consider this and other topics from a more nuanced approach. There is no black and white on this side of death–there’s not even a Crayola box of primary colors.

I’m not sure if my professor performed some voodoo ritual or if God just wanted to nail down that lesson before I procreated and taught little people to be judgmental, but the year after I graduated from school, I got tossed into a messy world–a boss who hated my guts, a dad who died, and two lawsuits filed against my sisters and me by fellow family members. I had many more questions than answers. And I began to understand what my professor was trying to teach me.

In times like those I take consolation in the words of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. 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.

And I remember that the mess isn’t all bad.