Excerpt from "The Painted Drum"

"life will break you. nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearnings. you have to love. you have to feel. it is the reason you are here on earth. you are here to risk your heart. you are here to be swallowed up. and when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could."--louise erdrich

Thank you to my co-worker for sharing this passage - I never fail to receive exactly what I need, exactly when I need it...timely.

Love will break me. Love will mend me and break me open again - I will taste as many sweet moments as I can.