Everyone stumbles at times, but I can always pick myself back up.

The useful measurement is not whether you fall over. It is how long you stay down, and that number moves.

There was a version of this a decade ago that took three weeks — the flat, the unanswered phone, the certainty that it was permanent.

The same size of knock now takes what, four days? Possibly two.

Nobody notices that improvement, because it arrives with no ceremony attached. But it is the most reliable evidence of getting stronger that a person ever gets, and it is sitting there in your own history, already collected.