Getting older adds people as much as it takes them. Count both before you decide it’s all loss.

Time subtracts, and it also introduces. The friends, partners, coworkers and kids who arrive later were nowhere in the picture when you were sixteen, so the arithmetic is not purely downward. Holding only the losses in view gives you an inaccurate account of your own life.

Count the people in your life now who were not there two years ago. That number is usually larger than you would have guessed.