"But some people really are doing better"

So far I've argued that your evidence is partial, that you know too much about yourself, that you pick a committee of specialists and that the ranking has no top. A fair reader will have been waiting to say something, and this chapter lets them say it. Some people really are doing better.

They are. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, and no study I've described says otherwise. Jordan's students underestimated other people's bad moments. That doesn't mean everyone's bad moments are equal. Some people have more money than you, and some have better health, easier children, kinder parents or better luck. Your friend may well be happier than you are this year. The previous chapters show that you can't tell from a housewarming. They don't show that it's false.

So here is how I'd treat the cases where it's true.

Start by separating two things that arrive together. "She earns more than I do" is a fact. "I'm behind" is a score. A fact describes the world and can be checked. A score needs something more, which is a race that you both entered, with the same start line, the same finish line and an agreed way of counting.

Lives don't meet any of those conditions. You and she didn't start in the same place. People's starts are some of the most heavily edited bits of all. Nobody announces the help with the deposit, the parents who paid the fees or the illness they never had. You aren't heading for the same finish either, because you've wanted different things and chosen accordingly. You may have picked work you cared about over work that paid. You may have stayed near your family when she moved for the job. Those were real choices, and they bought you things that don't show up in a kitchen. It makes no sense to choose meaning over money and then mark yourself on money.

And there's no agreed way of counting. The dip quietly assumes one, which is whatever the other person happens to be good at. At the housewarming it counted in houses, with your cousin it counts in kilometres, and at the school gate it counts in children's reading levels. If the unit changes every time, you aren't being measured against anything.

Sometimes the difference comes from a choice of yours that you'd now make differently. That does hurt, and I won't wave it away. But it's regret, and regret is a different thing from a score. It points at something specific, and what you can usefully do with it is decide what you want from here. Chapter 12 deals with that. Being behind isn't a condition you can act on, whereas wishing you'd trained for something different is.

Last, suppose the fact is simply true and owes nothing to your choices. She has more, she started level with you, and she's content. Even then, ask what the dip adds. The fact was just as true at four o'clock, before you'd seen the kitchen, and your life was fine at four o'clock. Her house takes nothing out of yours. The only thing that made your evening worse was the score, and the score was your own contribution.

So when the dip comes and you can't honestly call the evidence partial, try saying the fact on its own. "She has a bigger house than I do." Then stop there. It's surprising how little that sentence weighs once "and therefore" has been taken off the end of it.