Reading a book about someone completely unlike you is the cheapest way to live a different life for a week.

Reading from inside somebody else’s head is an odd kind of access: for a week you get their assumptions, their fears, their ordinary Tuesday, in a way no summary provides. It does not make you an expert on their life, but it loosens the certainty that everybody experiences things roughly as you do. The cost is a library ticket and a few evenings.

Pick a novel this month where almost nothing matches your own circumstances, and read it without taking notes. Notice what you assumed that the book does not. Being surprised by somebody is the whole point.