Real losses, illness, a country that has changed, the better job, the better marriage, and when it's more than the past

The rule holds every day. Some cases need their own paragraph, and some of them are cases where the sigh is partly right.

Real losses. Chapter 13 said it and I'll say it again. If the good old days had someone in them who's gone, missing them isn't the habit. Keep the person, by name, and let the era go. If the missing hasn't eased at all in a long time, or has got heavier, the NHS grief pages point to Cruse Bereavement Support and to a GP, and both are for you.

Illness. If the good old days are the years before your body changed, the comparison has something real in it, and I'm not going to argue that a bad hip is a bias. What I'd say is that the golden version has still taken the problems out of the well years, which had their own, and that the whole record of now has good in it that the hip hasn't reached. Both are true. The rule applies to the parts it applies to.

A country that has changed. Some things about the country are different and some are worse, and this book takes no view on which. What it says is that "everything's got worse" is a claim about the measurements and the measurements don't show it, and that "this particular thing has got worse" is a claim you can check, and should, one thing at a time, against the record rather than the feeling. Argue about the things. Not about the era.

The better job. If you had a job you loved and now have one you don't, the comparison may be fair. Put the problems back anyway, because the job you loved had a boss and a commute and a Sunday-night feeling too, and then ask what the loved job had that this one lacks, specifically, because that's a thing you can go and look for, and a decade isn't.

The better marriage. If a past relationship glows, remember chapter 18. You never lived with the toothpaste lid. The golden version of a person you loved at twenty-three is the most edited thing in the whole record, and the person beside you is competing with a photograph. Put that person's problems back with particular care.

When it's more than the past. If the present has been grey for most of the day, most days, for two weeks or more, and the past is the only place with any colour in it, that's the NHS's guide for seeing a GP about low mood, and the method in this book is not a substitute. Nostalgia is triggered by low mood, and a mind that's been low for weeks will go back constantly, and the going back isn't the problem. See a GP. The problems column can wait.