The problems you get to keep

A woman who makes granola in her kitchen in Agouza sells it from a table at a weekend market.

Her problems are well known to her. The jars run out by noon. The table is hot by eleven. Half the people who taste a spoonful smile and walk on. She pictures the supermarket shelf as the place where all of this stops.

Then a supermarket says yes, and the old problems really do stop. New ones take their place. Every pack now needs a barcode and a printed shelf life. Payment arrives weeks after the goods. Her jar sits beside three others and nobody tastes any of them. A whole carton comes back because the corners were crushed in the van.

It is tempting to read this as a trap, as if growing only makes things worse. It is just as tempting, before the move, to believe the next stage will finally bring some calm. Both views miss the same thing. No step removes problems. Each one exchanges the troubles you have for a different collection.

That is not a reason to stay at the market table. It is a better question to ask before leaving it. Not whether the next stage will be easier, because it will not, but whether its problems are ones worth having. A shelf across Cairo brings harder problems than a folding table. For someone who wants her granola in every kitchen cupboard in the city, they are the right ones.

Progress, seen plainly, is choosing which difficulties to spend your days on. The good ones are the ones you are glad to wake up to.