But more than anything else, conquering your shame really does make your life feel like art. Each experience feels precious, adds up, and feels valuable emotionally, because you’re no longer trying to bend yourself into a shape that will impress or please or delight others. Instead, you get to impress and please and delight yourself, without apology, without hesitation, every day. You don’t have to become someone special. You just have be yourself: impossibly deluded, deeply uncertain, and gloriously alive.