Wake at 6:00 a.m., stretch, and prepare a light breakfast of fruit and tea [1, 3].

One Tuesday, the grocer’s shop was shuttered. A "For Lease" sign hung crookedly in the window. Elias stopped. He counted his twenty-two steps again, thinking he had miscalculated. The silence of the closed shop was "deafening," a sensation similar to what others feel when sudden changes break a long-standing habit [12].

For Elias, the importance of a daily routine lay in its ability to calm a "whirring mind" [12]. Like the artist Anne Truitt, he found that when nothing was expected of him except what he expected of himself, his whole body felt at peace [5].

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