Time is things coming to be, that is all. It moves, or so it seems to us, in the patterning and unpatterning that is life and death. All we are ourselves is just this coming to be; bright patterns on the river surface, flickering for a few or many moments and then gone in a swirl, or settling gently back to the quiet of some pool under the dappled shade.

How could it be otherwise? How could we be master of our fate, we who are nothing but the moments of what happens to be? What could be happier than to see that we are free at last from the menacing years and the straitened gates, free to be all that we have come to be, and nothing more?

Sitting quietly by the window, in the light of the little lamp across the room, there isn’t anything but this stillness, this peace without seeking. This, for now, is all there is, and all there needs to be. What else could it be?

[The second paragraph is an answer of sorts to William Ernest Henley’s poem ‘Invictus’, from which I have borrowed some images.]