“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. 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 you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum LP
Mother of All Things 
This is beautiful and thought provoking. Thanks fir sharing it.
I needed this today. Thank you.
I love this. I have a 12 year old daughter who has a very huge, very breakable heart (like her mom). I try to convince her that “not loving” will not stop her from feeling heartbreak. I’m going to give this to her.