I am beautiful, intelligent, fun, and full of life.

At four in the afternoon on a Thursday in February, most of these are offstage. Not gone — offstage. Vitality clocks off early, wit needs sleep, and they all turn up again on their own schedule.

Most of us accept one or two of them about ourselves and quietly hand back the others. Whichever one you just flinched at is worth noticing. It tends to be the one somebody else formed an opinion about years ago, and you have been carrying their verdict ever since.

The rest didn't stop being true while that verdict was being enforced.