Louise Erdrich’s book, “The Painted Drum” contains some genuine pearls of wisdom, including the quote below. She supports my “you’re deader than you think” approach to living life with gusto and purpose, because you just never know. Here is a passage I particularly like in its reality and wisdom:

“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.”

Advice? You can’t taste all the apples in one day (never mind what the doctor said), but if you eat one today and another tomorrow… Heck, it might inspire you to eat a couple of them the next day. Put that on your cork board!