I deserve a life filled with success and happiness.

Success and happiness get imagined as a delivery — poured in from somewhere, arriving all at once, at the level you specified.

What fills a life is smaller and more granular than that. Success comes in units of a difficult conversation handled well. Happiness comes in units of forty minutes on a Sunday with nowhere to be.

The two don't always travel in the same car, and the trap is waiting for both to be delivered together before deciding your life has started. It fills the way a bath does — from a tap that doesn't look like much while it's running.