There’s a game a friend of mine likes to play in her affluent Brooklyn neighborhood: When she’s walking down Henry Street, she looks up at the multimillion-dollar brownstones and imagines the lives of the people inside. In her version, most of them went to Harvard and made life choices better than hers, which have rewarded them with original pocket doors and Gaggenau appliances. But then she remembers: They still have to lug a stroller up the front stairs every time they come home. They still have to bring their laundry to the basement where there are probably mice. “It’s so crazy how rich you have to be in New York to live comfortably, just comfortably,” she tells me, slightly out of breath, while she runs to a meeting. “There’s this very subtle heartbreak that perhaps people made better life choices than you and their houses are bigger and they are happier.”
