A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 75

Good times and bad, obscurity and fame — they arrive and they pass, and nobody is exempt. Innocent’s picture of a life well handled is riding those sways without getting dizzy, which is his way of naming the loss of your balance.

Two things keep that balance: your passions, and a true knowledge of self. Money tests both, and from opposite directions. Reaching for it can bend you into someone else, and holding it can blur the sense of who you were before it came. He rules out both halves in advance, deciding that “neither will having money steal my self-knowledge.”

The stance he draws from it is a fighting one rather than a serene one: “Whatever life stages come and go, fight to maintain control of self and remain grounded.” Successful or near failure, known or unknown, the aim holds — stay true to who he is, and keep doing what he loves most, as well as he can.