empty-handed

We move through life acquiring more knowledge, more stresses, more resources, and more psychological burdens. Like pennies tossed into our backpack, we do not notice until the weight strains our shoulders after years of striving and toil. We become reactionary and insensitive to the absolute mystery that is life and death. Attached to the backpack, we continue to bear it because it contains everything we know, and fear losing it to be completely vulnerable. By paying close attention to the whole movement of accumulation through time, the blazing flame of self-understanding illuminates, and we realize we never needed the backpack. The freedom sought lies not in becoming more, but in the willingness to meet life empty-handed.