There’s a Steely Dan song called Any Major Dude Will Tell You.
It’s about a man talking to another man who’s falling apart. Not fixing him. Not lecturing him. Just telling him: I’ve been there. It gets better. Trust me on this.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
I’ve been looking for that conversation my entire adult life and didn’t know it. I rarely found it. Men don’t tend to talk that way — not honestly, not without persona, not without the armor we put on when we were teens and never took off.
This is my attempt to start it.