I love this quote. I was once a laborer, where I found refuge from my fear of deep, committed love. I said no to marriage many times, afraid of the box it would paint me in, and really, to the painful divorce it would inevitably end in. I had little trust in my ability to marry and remain married. A social defect inherited from my parents and reinforced by my culture.

That’s not to say I didn’t try. I did fall in love and I was engaged more than once.

In 1999, I ended a very promising engagement to a wonderful man who for several years patiently and painfully endured my wavering commitment to commitment. After our final conversation, I drove away in my car, parked in a secluded mountain field and cried uncontrollably for nearly an hour. I didn’t know it then, but I was grieving my incapacity to give myself to love.

I bumbled through an awkward period of despair, mourning, self-hatred, and finally, piercing honesty, the soul’s great liberator.

And this is what I learned: a long, long time ago I stopped loving but didn’t know it. I believed I loved, and as best as I was able, I did love – I loved many things and people and places. Once and a while I even felt love, which I savored like a rare dessert. I knew it would soon be gone and I may not taste it again for a long long time.

The normal everyday love I experienced was dry and dull, like a black and white photocopy of a beautiful sunset. Love as I personally experienced it was not the sunset itself, it was the photocopy, a second-hand representation. My capacity for love, it dawned on me, was so self-protectively withheld that it was little more than an idea in my mind. That’s where love goes when our heart has closed.

This was the truth that liberated me.

I didn’t come to this truth on my own. I found it with the help of a friend who I happened to meet during the self-hatred period (bad timing, it might seem). My friend was kind and free from guile and early on saw and understood my pain and flaws and all my misguided attempts to find love while avoiding true connection. My friend saw through me and loved me anyway. I had never been loved like this, not even by my self.

A friend like this is precious, and if you ever find one, don’t take them for granted, don’t let them go, lest a pearl of great price will slip from your hands. I, for once, didn’t let such a good one go.

Five years ago today, I married my friend. My love for him ignited in me a special type of fearlessness. And during these five years, I have dared bare open my heart. I dared to love and be loved, to see and be seen, to trust and be trusted, to grow and to be challenged. I am a changed and better person, all to love’s credit – a triumvirate of love: Bill’s love for me, my love for Bill and our love for Love itself.

Now we walk together in the light of a living sunset. I still experience black and white photocopy love now and then, but the rare treat of real love, deeply felt love, is an everyday reality. The bar of love has been raised. And I like it here.

To my darling Bill,

My best friend, spiritual ally, travel companion extraordinare, co-adventurer in growth, science partner in life’s Laboratory of Love, and co-explorer of the angelic planes,

Happy anniversary,

I love you.