He demands a sacrifice...

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also stretch it's poison and leave your for dead with its yearning. The only choice is to let yourself love. You have to feel with you entire body, your entire soul. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up by someone else. 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, because trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. They are like me.