As time passes, I seem to be getting more closed off to the world around me. I find myself grasping onto work as my sustenance, while interactions with other people becomes increasingly tedious. Shame is my constant companion that both shows me the direction toward a possibly more joyful life, and annoys me to no end with how I end up going in other directions.

At the same time, its passage makes clear to me that life involves change. Some of the changes are noticeable, others only recognizable when looking back to the past. No matter what I choose to do, its inevitability is comforting in a way. Life is a movement, a form of art that happens both with and without me.

Perhaps shame exists because of the centrality of me in that perspective of life. To embrace life without me sounds liberating. In practicing Buddhism by learning a perspective of life not involving me, may time that has not yet passed be.