Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

I’m in a strange situation of seeming basically like an extrovert but feeling quite lonely. I organize things with my smallish group of close friends, but as more of them have kids, those get-togethers are so frenetic and kid-focused that we rarely have real conversations anymore. I feel like I know them, and they know me, much less than we used to—and that gap breaks my heart.

So I’ve been trying to branch out more. I organize get-togethers at work, start up conversations, invite groups to hang out—but I rarely have a lot of effort directed back toward me socially. I occasionally fall into these deep, blue moods, where I genuinely feel like if I could agree to, say, a magical pact wherein I could have one of my legs amputated in exchange for never feeling like I needed socialization again, I would eagerly agree. It’s so tiring: I can’t stop wanting to have friends, and yet, honestly, friendship has mostly been a disappointing pain for the past couple of years.

And last—despite all of this—I have a few glimmers of hope: kind new acquaintances who invite me to something, or follow up, or actively participate in trying to reschedule. And now I’m at a strange point of having been friendship-burned enough that these new opportunities actually make me feel very anxious and vulnerable. I just feel like I’m getting back on the terrible merry-go-round of hope and disappointment related to friendship. How do I develop a healthier relationship to this cycle?

Dear Reader,

I want you to hang on to your leg, both your legs, and hang on to hope. Friendship, like everything else, comes in waves. And as each fresh wave of everythingness arrives, happy and sad, entropic and creative, interested in you and purely unconcerned, rushing in and then receding, what it leaves you with is mysteriously related to how you handled the wave before. Did you meet it with a bit of symmetry and poise, a touch of private mettle, or did you just get bowled over and churned like a lump in the wave-chambers?

What I’m saying is: Hold your ground. Right now you feel alone. But a person who can handle their own solitude, who can carry their own weight, who isn’t loudly and sprawlingly involved in everybody else’s business, texting and weeping and crashing around, is fascinating. And, eventually, magnetic. This solitude is not forever.

The kids/no-kids divide is very real. Parents have to talk with other parents, in parent language, and nonparents are left twiddling their thumbs (to put it no more strongly than that). But try to forgive your friends with kids. As idiotically preoccupied as they have become, as passionately oblivious to the nonkid world as they appear to be, they need you badly. They might be feeling lonely themselves. What are friends for? For reassuring us that we exist; for finding us interesting when we’re boring; for holding on to the better parts of us even as we slide like renegade meatballs into the worse parts. Your friends with kids—some of them, anyway—will come back. Courage!

Serenely underwater,

James

Dear James,

I am 75, and when I was in college, I read Erik Erikson and thought, I will be satisfied at the end of my life. But instead, I look back with regret and see only my mistakes. I’m suffering from heartache, and though I tried to be a loving person throughout my life, I must have been selfish, as my daughter recently screamed at me just before she cut me out of her life—she doesn’t like that I drink wine and occasionally have too much. My son lives with me, but he suffers from anxiety and can’t go anywhere. I’m trapped at home (my husband died 18 months ago) and feeling very sad. Is there anything I can do?

Dear Reader,

I wrote a poem, in the hope that it might cheer you up:

When the misery comes,
up the rungs of your lungs
and clambering into your brain,
all the rue and regret,
and the fever and fret
and the feelings you cannot explain—
make yourself a nice sandwich.
Despondency, banish.
Move in the direction of health.
Put on some clean clothes.
Stick your nose in a rose.
It’s not going to smell itself.

Wishing you a string of good moments,

James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

What are we, modern humans, to make of work? How can I do it without so much anxiety, but still sufficient productivity? The daily grind is mostly fine but also highly stressful, with manic bouts of propulsion toward deadlines, little clarity around what I should do or should have done, and the constant drumbeat of fear that I’m not adding much value. I find myself regularly reviewing awkward and painful moments of my day at night, when I should be sleeping, or when I would probably derive much more life satisfaction from attuning to my kids.

I’ve never been able to settle on an overarching mission for my working life because nothing seems reliable or worthy enough of sacrificing the other major factors that impact my happiness—mostly the amount of time I can spend with my family, the location where we live, and the security of a decent salary. So in a way I see myself as infinitely flexible; I don’t have a great, deep reason for doing what I do now, but it would probably take a lot for me to tack to something else. I have no grand plan. Am I going to regret this when I reach retirement age?

Is it this job, or is this just what work is? Is it me? What can the average person expect from a lifetime of work? What should we be aiming for?

Dear Reader,

In my 20s, I worked at an office in West London analyzing transport statistics: how many cars are on the rotary at one time and which direction they’re coming from, how many passengers climb on the train at a particular station, etc. I made projections, I stared at graphs. And before I was driven from the place by a detonation sequence of mind-wrecking panic attacks, I was strangely happy there. The boringness of the work seemed to have its own value. A feeling of muffled industry. Engrossing, in a gently overcast way. No mistaking it for something that might ignite my spirit: it was work, nothing but. I sat at my desk, peacefully working. Had I not turned into the figure from Munch’s The Scream—flipper hands grasping my skull, bands of distortion in the sky—I’d be there still.

Not every job has to blaze with vocational intensity, and not everybody needs to have a fulfilling career. In fact I applaud you for not having a “great deep reason” for doing the job you’re doing. We’ve got enough great deep reasons floating around these days. And I can assure you that you are adding ineffable value to your workplace just by being there: An office (it sounds like an office) is a mystical body like any other, and one person’s presence or absence changes everything. So do your work. And then go home.

Unprofessionally,
James

Dear James,

Sometimes when I’m in the grocery store, I see someone I sort of know but don’t really know well, and I find myself wondering what to do. Should I say hi and start a conversation, or just nod politely and walk on by? It feels awkward, because I’m never sure if they’re thinking the same thing or hoping to avoid an interaction altogether. How do you handle these situations?

Dear Reader,

Small talk can be beautiful, and there’s always the possibility of being irradiated with joy by a chance encounter in the grocery aisle, but then again … people. There are so many of them. They are so tiring. And now and again, for reasons to do with cerebral electricity, affective response, and what’s in your shopping basket, there really is nothing—literally nothing—to say.

Me, I tend to go for it: the big hello, and the conversational follow-through. But there have also been occasions when I have ducked into the baking section and waited for someone to go away. So I dunno. I like the old Jesuit maxim agere contra: “act against.” Or, more idiomatically: Get over yourself, If you’re feeling muted and introverted, in other words, reach out. And if you’re all swollen with ebullience—be gentle. Does that help at all?

Twitching by the carrots,
James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.

Editor’s Note: Every Tuesday, James Parker tackles a reader’s existential worry. He wants to hear about what’s ailing, torturing, or nagging you. Submit your lifelong or in-the-moment problems to dearjames@theatlantic.com.

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Dear James,

Do you ever feel like you know how you’re going to die? I’m 38 years old, have no health conditions, take no medication, and work a low-risk job with manageable stress. The way I see it, I’m Teflon, except for two Achilles’ heels (both heels!):

1. My driving
2. My diet

I’m not an insane driver. It’s not as if I weave between six lanes of traffic to gain one car length. But I do love to drive fast, and I also hate to waste time. It’s a potent combination. I’ve had enough close calls that I can’t deny the significantly nonzero chance that one day all the high-speed, moving variables align to end me.

If the car doesn’t get me, it’ll be my high-fat, high-calorie diet. Despite my life of fast-food abundance, I am not obese, because I am extremely tall and get regular exercise. My large frame hides a lot of excesses. Though external warning signs are absent, everything I know about nutrition makes me feel like I’m headed for a stealth cardiac event or terrible, late-detected cancer.

Don’t get me wrong: I love living! But I think that’s why I find myself handicapping the cause of my own death. Is this normal, or at least not unprecedented?

Dear Reader,

First: Slow down, dude. I’m not being metaphorical. Go slower in your car! In my mind, I see you zooming around out there, folded over the wheel in your tallness, blazing with your fast-food calories, calculating your odds, making a bit of a menace of yourself. I like being speedy too, but think about who else is on the road with you: the panicking, the wild with anger, the hesitant, the half-asleep, the ones who need their eyes tested. Also: the nice people just driving along on their way to Chuck E. Cheese. Do not conscript them into your game of high-speed moving variables.

Now to your question: Is it normal to envision or predict the cause of one’s own death? I think it most certainly is. The other night I attended a performance by the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan, a very Beckettian figure in his baggy black suit and tipped-back hat, speaking lyrically about madness and death, twitching around in the spotlight. Tiernan told us that he was all for the death penalty, because it gives the condemned man a how and a when and a why: You’re going to die at 3 p.m. on Thursday, by such-and-such a method, because you killed someone with an ax. (Rather than conking out randomly in a room at the DoubleTree, was his point.) Me, I imagine rather fondly that I’ll get hit by a bus: I picture myself looping through the air post-impact, in slow motion, full of regrets and reconsiderations, perhaps even having a last-minute breakthrough. But the Lord comes like a thief in the night, doesn’t he? So I’m pretty sure that, when the ultimate moment arrives, that’s not how it’ll be. You, too, might get a surprise. In the meantime: I’m glad you love living. Eat fewer McNuggets, and take your foot off the gas.

Droning with mortality,
James

Dear James,

Because I’m an old geezer (I’ll be 80 next June), I often reflect on the wreckage I may have left behind in my long life. In the past couple of years, someone I hurt emotionally has stopped talking to me entirely, and he’s made it clear that I shouldn’t try to get in touch with him, either.

Over the course of about 30 years, I have sincerely apologized to him a couple of times for the damage I did. But now, in my old age, it occurs to me that an apology—no matter how sincere—does not have the emotional and moral weight that asking for forgiveness does. It’s not really getting to the bottom of what happened between us. What do you think?

Dear Reader,

I don’t know how anybody expects to get to the end of their life, especially a long life, without a look over their shoulder at the mile-wide seam of smoldering, Mad Max ruination they’ve left behind them: craters, twisted frames, flattened people. Equally, I’m sure your eight decades have been strewn with uncounted good deeds and good vibes. Why not reckon them up?

I once got dumped by a friend—extremely painful!—and I sought advice from someone with more experience than me. “Ah,” he said, “when it’s over, it’s so over.” And so it has proved. Sounds to me like your friend can’t, won’t, or is disinclined to forgive you. So forgive yourself. Let yourself off the hook. Leave him to his life, and get back to living yours. And when the ruminations arise, those creeping wreckage-thoughts, simply give them a nod and then turn your mind elsewhere. Make yourself a nice cup of coffee and sit and watch the weeds grow.

In rustic peace,
James

By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it in part or in full, and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.