People a hundred years ago worried about their kids, their rent and whether anyone liked them. Some things never change.

The past gets imagined as a different species. Different clothes, different machines, so you assume different interiors, and that assumption makes your own worries feel unprecedented. They are not. Somebody lay awake in 1920 over money, over a child, over what a particular person thought of them. The content shifts and the shape holds.

Next time a worry feels uniquely yours, set it in a kitchen a century ago and see whether it still works. Most do. That does not fix it, but it removes the loneliness of thinking nobody has been here.