I have fun and ride the energy of life. I live through my narrative of happiness.

Two people come back from the same week away. One describes the rain and the argument about the car park. The other describes the swim and the tomatoes from the market stall. Neither is lying. They kept different receipts.

The telling is not decoration laid over the week. It selects what survives into memory, and memory is what you will actually own in ten years.

So the story is worth taking seriously as an instrument rather than as self-deception. Both of them will remember accurately. Only one of them will remember the tomatoes.