When I let go of one thing, I make space for something better.

Take a wardrobe out of a bedroom and what you get, immediately, is a rectangle of darker carpet and a wall that needs painting.

The better thing arrives later, if it arrives. In between there is a gap, and the gap is genuinely uncomfortable — quieter phone, emptier Saturday, nothing yet to say when people ask what you are doing now.

That interval gets skipped in most accounts of this, which is why people assume they have done it wrong when the replacement fails to show up within the month.

Space is not a reward. It is a condition. What it does is make you available for something you could not have taken on while the wardrobe was still in the room.