Focal point vs movement

One of the pithy rules of composition says that every painting should have a focal point or centre of interest. Yet that would seem to contradict the idea of movement, which says that our eye should move around the picture, never stopping or resting in one spot for too long. In practice, a painting can have both a focal point and movement as long as the focal point doesn’t hold the eye in one place and prevent it from travelling elsewhere. Instead, the focal point becomes a spot from which we can travel and return to repeatedly, as our eye moves around the painting.