Why do I shrink my joy the moment I feel it?

Nasreddin once found one sunbeam coming through a crack in his roof, warming exactly one tile. He sat on that tile all morning, happier than he'd been in a week. Then he thought: this is a poor man's joy. A rich man would own the whole sun. He stood up, cold, and went to complain to the judge that his roof only had one hole. This is what you're doing with the coffee, the song, the light through the window. You feel it fully, for one honest second. Then some invoice arrives in your head, checking the delight against a bigger delight you imagine you're owed. The small joy loses the comparison every time, because it was never trying to be the big one. Doing this with others makes it worse and better at once. Worse, because you often minimize out loud — 'it's nothing' — training the room to agree with you. Better, because a pod or partner can catch the sentence before you finish it, which you can't always do alone.