If he’s honest, it’s because he likes it. The routine, or the calm, that means he has not felt his heart pain in the longest time. He does not know what has lifted it, exactly. Years of medication, maybe. Or the exercise, or living alone, without a woman, or the peace he’s made with the things he did and the people who left and the way the sun keeps rising, regardless. He misses some things. Some people. Knows, though, that that’s just the way of things, and he prefers the balance, the rest, unexciting and mundane and, it turns out, all that he seems to need.
