Dear James: I’m Living in a Tragedy

Editor’s Observe: Is something ailing, torturing, or nagging at you? Are you beset by existential worries? Each Tuesday, James Parker tackles readers’ questions. Inform him about your lifelong or in-the-moment issues at [email protected].Don’t wish to miss a single column? Signal as much as get “Pricey James” in your inbox.Pricey James,I’m a 20-year-old coping with a string of horrible occasions. My estranged mom died in a automotive accident a couple of days in the past. An in depth buddy of mine has been hospitalized for mental-health causes, and I haven’t heard from them. I lately had a falling-out with my household; the small print are difficult, however, lengthy story brief, I used to be pressured to maneuver out of my household residence and am now residing at my accomplice’s.What ought to I do? How ought to I even really feel? How do you keep your compassion and drive when the worst retains coming your method?Pricey Reader,I learn someplace that Carl Jung, when you got here to him with information of a beautiful occasion in your life, would shake his head and say phrases to the impact of: Properly, that’s very unlucky, but when we pull collectively we are able to in all probability make it by this. Conversely, when you’d had unhealthy luck, or had been experiencing a private downturn, he would give you his heartiest congratulations.The purpose being, I suppose, that these up-against-it moments—just like the one by which you end up—are the locations the place we develop and be taught, about life and about ourselves. Not that that is any comfort to you proper now: You’re simply attempting to maintain it collectively underneath an onslaught of occasions and feelings. However as a lot as the present scenario is filling your windshield, overlaying each inch of obtainable floor, I’m fairly certain that, ahead of you suppose, you’ll have all of this in your rearview mirror. And the way you look again on it, how you’re feeling about it, will likely be decided by one factor: whether or not you saved an open coronary heart.You determine clearly the danger of being overwhelmed—a sealing-up of the self that results in lack of feeling for different folks, lack of connection to your personal sacred momentum. That is struggling in its demonic side; it grinds off your humanity. So there’s the problem. Don’t be defeated. Don’t go right into a defensive crouch. Keep upright and obtainable to what’s occurring, even when—particularly if—what’s occurring is fairly horrible.I’ll say this to you as nicely: You might be younger and powerful. Me, on the age of 57 and with all of my numerous habits—I’m prone. The faintest contact of calamity lays me out. However you possibly can in all probability run for days on two hours of sleep and a graham cracker. You’ll be able to survive this. One upside to every thing being terrible, to your complete world going acute, because it had been, is that you realize it might’t final. Acuteness, by its nature, has to show into one thing else. So dangle in there, attempt to not determine utterly with the sentiments which can be blasting by you (they are going to go), and hold your eye on the horizon. Reduction is coming.Sending you the facility vibes,JamesBy submitting a letter, you might be agreeing to let The Atlantic use it partly or in full, and we might edit it for size and/or readability.