What we repeat becomes our center, that's sure. So when the wind is kicking up spray — when the movement of the air is really howling round you — we return to what we have repeated, what has become our rote. If it is made of wood, you will likely float; if it is a stone it will sink you.

Lately, the home that I thought was brick turned out to be sticks, and the sticks turned out to be straw, so that with a lick of the wind, with a flick of a match, all of the concrete that protected me from storm turned tinder, and took flight or caught flame. Work which together lifted me and a company as we grew together arrived at a natural and logical completion, so employment will change. A partnership which saw two continents, two children, two farms and two languages has followed the same living arc from a birth to a death, and all the twos have become ones. The home which housed a family now surrounds silence, both delightful and hollow.

As you grow you choose what will be repeated, what will be your sanctuary. Perhaps by default, unaware, you choose drink, or bodies, or sports or politics… But when you stop, when you measure the quality of each external sanctuary, they always come up short. They are anchors, when what you need is a boat.

Somewhere, sometime, I chose the still point, and the winds rip at me but never quite tear the center.