I deserve a good life.

There's a quiet accounting a lot of people run without noticing: good things must be paid for in advance, in effort or in difficulty, and anything unearned will eventually be reclaimed.

Nobody applies that rule to other people. You would never tell a friend she has to suffer a set amount before she's allowed a decent Sunday.

A good life isn't a prize handed out at the end of a sufficiently hard stretch. It's the ordinary conditions — rest, work that isn't crushing, people glad to see you — that you'd want for anyone you cared about. You're in that category too.