The thing you thought on the stairs

It's a Tuesday evening and your partner has just come off the phone with the school. The call was about your son and it wasn't a good call, and you listened from the kitchen. They didn't get defensive. They asked two questions you wouldn't have thought to ask, they got a date for a meeting out of it, and they said thank you to the teacher at the end in a voice that meant it. You thought, on the stairs, that was handled really well. I'd have lost my temper by the second minute. Then you went up to find a towel and the thought went wherever those thoughts go.

Or it's the meeting on Thursday. A colleague you don't know well presents eight slides, and for once you can follow what's being asked and why. You think, that's the clearest thing anyone's shown us this quarter. The meeting ends. You say nothing, not because you decided not to, but because there wasn't a moment, and then there was a different meeting.

Or it's your sister on the phone, telling you how she dealt with a customer who was shouting. Or your dad on Sunday, on the floor with the grandchildren, more patient at seventy than he was at forty. Or a stranger on a platform in a coat you admired for the length of a train. Each time, the same thing. A clear, favourable, true thought about a person, formed in full, and then put away.

These are invented, but I'd guess you have your own. Some words. The good thought is the favourable thing you think about a person. The drawer is where it goes when you don't say it, and I'd guess yours is full. Saying it is the act, and I'll talk about the said version and the thought version of the same good opinion. The guess is what you predict about how it'll land. The squirm is the awkwardness you feel in advance. The landing is how the other person actually takes it, which you rarely get to see. The wording is the worry about how to phrase it. The brush-off is what they say when they wave it away. The detail is the concrete thing you noticed, which chapter 18 is about. And one a day is the rule, which chapter 22 is about.

Before you go on, do one thing. For three days, keep a note of every good thought you have about a person, however small, and mark whether you said it. A word on the phone will do. At the end of three days you'll have two numbers. I'd guess the first is a lot bigger than the second, and the gap between them is what this book is about.