Ardently

This is a borrowed title, for I love the feel of the word and it's meaning. This piece is not for one person, but for all, and it's essence came to me from the half-awake place that things of great worth sometimes do. In the early hours. So I won't capture it exactly here, as it is not a thing made of words.
A friend tried to describe to me something about the nature of true love a couple of years ago, as she drove me out of the mountains and into the foothills. It was a transient meeting, a gift of transport and an hours' time. I wonder now whether her soul's intention was to deliver this message to me at just that moment in life, so that I could let it slowly percolate and sink into me over time and through experience. I am slow at processing many things, at least the most important ones, and it tends to happen deep in the underground of my consciousness, sprouting quietly below the surface. I appreciate those in my life who have to patience to see this, that I am slowly unfolding, but unfolding nonetheless. Sometimes there is an appearance of sudden insight, but really it has been residing and growing in me over a lifetime.
At the time, as my friend drove me across the green hills west of Calgary, I did not know it or understand what she was describing. I had not settled that deeply or fearlessly into my own heart. But a seed was planted, and though I can see that I have waged a battle with this understanding of love over my entire life, something of it has landed for me now. For what it's worth, I will let it sink deeper and become one with the way that I move and see in the world.
And I am guessing that it is worth everything.
A few posts ago I referred to it - the wisdom that is shared rather than singular. We are built to disintegrate into one another, to sink into the knowing place beneath the surface of all things where there is no separation. The protective shell of individuation is not needed, and does not actually protect us but serves only to keep us locked in a prison of our own making. Safe behind the invisible bars of our own identities and certainties. We like to have things to cling to.
I have long been of the opinion that my strong boundaries were one of my greatest assets, my ability to discern and protect myself from people and situations that might disable me, or somehow steal my soul. I have held fast to the notion that I would never abandon myself. I can easily see some of the places this drive has come from in my early years, the conditions and difficulties of my youth. In those days it was sometimes necessary, and gave me the much needed strength to know who I was, to be unequivocally myself.
Whole.
Sane.
Resilient.
Grounded.
All good things that have served me well. And also locked me out.
Whatever resistance that is met on this journey is here to be breathed in, assimilated, and released into the ether with each exhale. I have always believed that true love arrives suddenly and with certainty, but now I think that it is just a practice, applicable to whomever might be sitting across the table from you at any time. It is something that can only be found in choosing. From moment to moment, to soften the edges of who we think we are and find the unified place where longing and arrival have merged into the beautiful mundane.