Great strength lies within me at all times

Strength gets imagined as something you reach for in a crisis, and crises are rare. Most days don't call for it in any recognisable form.

What's actually running is more like a floor — getting up at six-forty on a grey morning, being decent to someone who was short with you, doing the boring middle of a project nobody is watching.

It doesn't feel like strength because it doesn't feel like anything. That's the sign it's working: underneath, holding, on days that don't seem to need it.