The decision

You've got the argument and the method. What's left is to decide, and this time you can do it in one sentence.

Put the problems back, visit and come back, and judge today from twenty years off.

Three parts.

The first is the whole record. One page per golden year, with the problems column filled from diaries, photographs and the people who were there. Kept where you can reach it for the moment the sigh arrives and you can't remember what was wrong.

The second is the visit. Chosen, with a person, with the whole record in the telling, with an end, and with one thing about today carried back through the door.

The third is the same distance. Today's good bit written down. The letter from the future written once. The Tuesday compared with the Tuesday. The sentence said forwards.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three.

When the sigh arrives, I'll ask "what was wrong that year" and answer it before I do anything else.

When I notice I've gone back without deciding to, I'll say one good thing about today and then decide whether to stay.

When someone says "it was better then", I'll say "some of it was" and name one thing that wasn't.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The problems column will be hard to fill the first time and will fill itself the second, because once one problem is back the others come with it. The first chosen visit with the whole record in it will be a better evening than the last twenty drifts. The letter from the future will make you cry, in a useful way. By a fortnight, the sigh will be arriving with its own answer attached, because the question will have become a reflex. By a month, you'll catch yourself at the dinner table saying "it wasn't, though", and being surprised by how much you enjoy the argument. The past won't glow less. It'll glow the same and be bigger, and today will have started to glow a little, early, before the fade has had to do it for you.