I keep sprinting toward answers that never resolve,

convincing myself the grass is greener, somewhere.

Other people probably envy a neat subset of my life.

I sample theirs and assume a higher mean happiness.

Selection bias. 

I know it.
I still do it.

I inventory the noise:

Bias in every window.

A happiness curve that spikes on other people’s pages.

Error bars I widen like sleeves I’m still growing into.

My mind widens its aperture.

Present-me answers like a coward:
It depends on the people.

Some permit it.
Some forbid it beautifully.

Meanwhile I stand between versions, in the doorway

If you’re here too.

Half suspended, half blunt.

Try this with me:

Stop measuring your life against theirs. This is ours.

Retire the prototype called Perfect, it only ships delays.

Let opinions pass through like weather.

Seven days without comparison. Do the error bars shrink?

Replace “ideal” with “sufficient”. Does the graph stabilize?

One value-aligned action, fifteen minutes, no flourish. Does it draw a line through you?

Maybe the answer moves by one percent.

Maybe it doesn’t. I don’t.

But if anything shifts,

even the way the air sits on your ribs.

we’ll count it as evidence.

And evidence, however small,

is the first mercy I trust.