Our next guest was a good friend of my husband’s when they were at Wang. They were on a committee to improve corporate morale. She quickly became my friend as well. She is a deep thinker, a published poet, a very talented baker (who before she began baking professionally made our wedding cake) and lives in New Hampshire with her husband Rags, her cats, views of Mount Monadnock and wonderful stargazing.

A friend of mine once announced that he was going to take a year to travel the world and search for peace. He quit his job and left his family — his ex-wife and two teen-aged daughters — behind, disappearing from our lives.

The year went by quickly, and when he returned, I was eager to hear of his pilgrimage. I expected him to be relaxed and perhaps even a bit Buddha-like. But while his face was tanned and his body lean and fit, his eyes were jaded and disillusioned.

“I went everywhere,” he said. “The cities were too noisy and polluted. I traveled to the jungles, full of bright flowers and singing birds. But they were too hot, and bugs were everywhere. The mountains were clean and the air was clear, but they were cold and difficult to travel in. Finally I came to white sand beaches, and I thought I had finally found peace. I lay in the sun and listened to the rhythm of the waves and felt content. Then the sand flies came out, and I had to run for cover.”

“What I learned is that nowhere in the world can one can truly find peace.”

I am so grateful to him for his journey and the lesson he brought back. Sometimes my world is conflict-free, and I can simply coast. More often demands of time and people fill it, and I rush from duty to duty. I read the news and its horrors and tragedies. I feel overwhelmed, full of self loathing for my failures, in pain for the suffering in the world, always too busy with too much to do.

But if I force myself to step away, even for five minutes, and meditate — if I sit on my cushion or a straight chair or walk mindfully — if I hold myself from doing, allow myself to simply be, then my mind clears and the battles in my brain find truce. I breathe in. I breathe out. I breathe in. I breathe out. I live in the gift of the breath.

When I am done, I am able to act with focus and clarity. The world’s rough and tumble collision of needs and wants, joy and pain does not stop. But I am able to rejoin it without attachments, and do the best I can and let go of what I cannot.

There is only one place in this world where I have been able to find peace. It is within me. It is always reachable if I will only seek it out.

Nori Odoi