The drive home

It's Saturday, a little after eight in the evening, and you're driving home from a housewarming.

The house was lovely. The kitchen had an island and a long window onto the garden, and the garden had a tree with a swing on it. Your friend showed you round with a glass in her hand, apologising for the state of rooms that were in no state at all. Her husband did something clever with lamb. Their children said please. At some point she mentioned, lightly, that she'd been made a director in the spring.

You like her. You've known her for fifteen years. You were glad for her, and you said so and meant it. But somewhere on the ring road a different feeling has arrived. Your flat was fine at four o'clock, and now it seems small and a bit tired. Your job, which you'd been quite enjoying, looks like the kind people get stuck in. You catch yourself working out how old she was when she bought her first place, and how old you are now.

Here's what I'd like you to notice about that drive. Nothing in your life changed between four o'clock and eight o'clock. You have the same flat, the same job, the same bank balance and the same people who love you. The only thing that changed is what you'd seen. And what you'd seen was four hours of one household, on a day they'd spent a week getting ready for.

Later, on the sofa, the phone adds three more. A man you worked with two jobs ago is thrilled to announce something. Your cousin has run a half marathon and looks happy and lean. A couple you met once on holiday are on a beach you'll never be able to find. None of it is aimed at you. By ten o'clock you've come second four times, and you go to bed with a feeling of being behind. If someone asked what you were behind in, you couldn't say.

I'm going to call that feeling the dip. It's the small drop in the stomach that follows a comparison you've lost. It deserves a name, because most of this book is about the second or two around it.

I'll use three other terms throughout. A good bit is a piece of someone's life that reaches you, such as a kitchen, a job title, a photograph or a remark. The edited version is what those pieces add up to in your head. The full version is your own life as you know it from the inside, with nothing left out.

The dip has some habits worth describing, because the details matter later.

It's quick, and you don't choose it. You didn't decide on the ring road to assess your housing. The sum had already been done by the time you noticed it, and the result arrived as a mood.

It's choosy about subjects. It turns up in the parts of life you care about and feel unsure of. If your friend had shown you her golf trophies, you'd have felt nothing at all.

It's choosy about people. A billionaire's yacht does nothing to you. Your old flatmate's loft conversion can spoil a weekend. The people who set it off are the ones who started roughly where you did.

It mostly points upwards. You've also been to homes that were smaller than yours, and I'd guess you didn't drive back from those feeling rich.

And it passes itself off as information. The dip doesn't say "I'm in a mood". It says "I'm behind", and it says it in the flat voice you'd use to report the time.

That last habit is the one that keeps the whole thing going. If the dip were only a mood, you'd wait for it to pass. Because it sounds like a fact about your life, you take it seriously and start planning round it. Sometimes you're drawing up those plans at one in the morning.

So the question for the next few chapters is whether it's a fact. I don't think it is, and I think that can be shown without pretending your friend's kitchen isn't nice.

If you'd like to test this as you read, try something for the next few days. When the dip comes, make a note of who set it off and what it was about. A line in your phone will do, such as "J, the house" or "cousin, running". Don't argue with the feeling and don't try to cheer yourself up. You're only collecting. The list gets used in chapter 5.