The drive home again

Here's the same Saturday a few months on, as an example of how it might go.

The housewarming is a different friend's this time, and the house is, if anything, nicer. There's a garden room. The children play instruments. Over the lamb, which seems to be what everyone cooks, he mentions that the business has had its best year.

On the ring road, the drop comes. It always will, since this is how minds work and yours is a normal one. Your flat starts to shrink again.

"That's a dip," you say, possibly out loud.

You ask what you didn't see. You don't know, and you don't need to. You saw four hours, and they'd been tidying for a week. You say the fact on its own. They have a lovely house and the business is doing well. You put nothing after it.

Then you check it against your list. You don't want a garden room. You do want outside space, which is already on your list, with a next step you've been putting off. When you get in, you spend ten minutes on it and no more, and you close the laptop. It's a quarter to nine.

You send a message. "Lovely evening. The garden room is wonderful, and I know what the last two years took. Really pleased for you both." You mean it, and sending it makes you mean it a little more.

The phone stays on the arm of the sofa. It's late and you're tired, and you know what you'd find.

Nothing in your life has changed since four o'clock. That was true the first time as well. What's different is that this time you noticed it, and the evening is still your own.

It won't always go that well. Some dips will get past you, some weeks will be heavy, and there are people whose news you may always find a little hard to hear. What I'm confident of is smaller. The dip is a claim, and it rests on poor evidence. Once you've seen how the comparison was put together, it's hard to go on taking its result as a verdict on your life.

If you're going to keep one thing from this book, keep the question. What didn't I see?

And one action, for today. Think of the friend whose life you most often measure yours against. Ring them, or see them, and tell them one true thing from your full version. Then listen to what comes back.