Clapping for someone while you’re losing is hard. It’s also the clearest proof you’ve got a good heart.

Feeling genuinely glad for somebody while your own thing is going badly is one of the harder things people do, and most of us manage it imperfectly. The difficulty is not that you are a bad friend. Their good news has arrived in the same room as your disappointment and the two get tangled. Doing it anyway, out loud, shows something about you that an easy week never gets the chance to show.

Say the congratulations even on a day when nothing else went right. Then let yourself be disappointed in private, because both things are true at once. You are not required to feel it perfectly.