Taste as much as possible.

 

Life’s Sweetness

“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, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)

          Louise Erdrich has a wonderful way with words, painting pictures with them that cannot be missed. I found this passage from The Painted Drum posted on Ravenous Butterflies a few days ago, and thought it somehow appropriate for this Memorial Day weekend.

          The only solution to brokenness is love. The only solution to the pain of loss is to feel what you feel. If you are anything like me, you try to protect your heart from being broken. It’s a natural instinct. We protect ourselves by trying to control everything and everybody around us—ostensibly so that whoever it is will have a better, happier life. But the kernel of truth beneath that desire is so that we will not hurt because of them. So that we will not have to watch them struggle and share their pain.

          Erdrich says, that’s why we’re here—to witness, and stand with our hearts open and available anyway. The last year and a half handed us a staggering amount of pain and suffering—all the lives lost to the pandemic, to gun violence, to suicide, have broken us in many ways. And that is as it should be. If these things don’t break your heart, then you should be concerned about yourself.  

Now, we’re beginning to recover but with scars that will not go away. Death has brushed by almost everyone—from Covid-19, gun violence, drug overdose, suicide. We resume life with that memory, and many of us will live differently because of it. If nothing else, this experience showed us what's important, and what is not. Hopefully, we will keep that awareness.

          But we cannot retreat into our caves and hide. We are here to love one another. We are here to feel what we feel, including fear and loss and joy and celebration. We are here to taste as much of life’s sweetness as possible. Life may break us, but love glues the pieces back together.

                                                                           In the Spirit,

                                                                 Jane