Taste It All

“Love won’t be tampered with, love won’t go away. Push it to one side and it creeps to the other.”― Louise Erdrich

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being 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 have 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 too 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, The Painted Drum

Sorrow is a given.
The price of loving well, deep, wholeheartedly.
It passes too.
Transforms to something tolerable.
Bitter to sweetness, with an edge.
Broken then mended, different but bound again.
Joy is sorrow’s roommate.
Hope too.
Let them in.
Hold their hand.
Dive into life and you’ll be pulled under.
But you are buoyant.
Love well.
In thoughts, words, actions mostly.
Love well.
Taste as much as you can.

“Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.”― Louise Erdrich, LaRose