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There must be some people who remember a 2023 cinematic stinker called “EXmas,” filmed in Kelowna, BC. A wayward son returns home unexpectedly for Christmas dinner, only to discover that his family has invited his adored ex-fiancée as guest of honour. Hilarity ensues! One viewer summed it up this way: “This is one of those movies that seems like it could be interesting and hilarious, but when you actually start watching it, you regret it.â€�

Which is exactly how things are likely to go when exes try to stay close with family members. Yes, it can be appealing. Here is a welcoming chosen family, after all, often more loving than biological kin. Why should that bond have to break just because its first occasion is dissolved? We know that you date a family, not just a person; but then, necessarily, you must part ways likewise.

People will claim exceptions, of course, and urge you to rise above the awkwardness. That optimism is too often revealed as delusional, its motives selfish. As with post-breakup shakedowns of material assets, the division of friends and loved ones is inevitable after a dump. In short: it is indeed the right thing for you to “step back� (loathsome phrase). Actually, it is the only thing.

I do object to the way you frame this move, however, as one of sparing the new love discomfort. That attitude seems both self-regarding and condescending. Don’t dress up your distance as a good deed. You initiated the breakup; take responsibility and shoulder the consequences. Wish the ex-BF and his clicking new love well, say goodbye to all that, and go your own way.

I think the calendar is burning me out. I keep thinking about the limited time left in the summer (we’re already into August!) and it’s meant I’ve scheduled my days to the brim with outdoor activities, patio meet-ups with friends and the like. The problem is that I work a pretty physical job and I’m exhausted. I know I should take a break or some time to myself but I feel like spending time indoors, alone, is sacrilege in this waning season. Help!

Recent news reports insist that burnout is the new normal — as if the pace of life in our millennial Roaring Twenties were more accelerated than ever before in human history. Your feelings about fleeting summer days seem like a small-scale version of a relentless social anxiety about marshalling precious time as the world burns. We’re all tangled in a tricky knot of YOLO meets FOMO.

Paradoxically, we see that the combined force of you-only-live-once plus fear-of-missing-out is a form of stasis. What activity, after all, could ever answer to such urgency? Suppose you try to do everything on a packed daily schedule. That’s now a form of slavery, packing each day so full that you never slow down and smell the roses. Your chummy patio meet-up is revealed as no more than a frantic beer-commercial distraction from true personal fulfilment.

The issue is far from new. “All of humanity’s problems arise from our inability to sit quietly in a room alone,� the French sage Blaise Pascal noted some 350 years ago. Solitude and quiet can be daunting prospects, especially when your phone is beeping out notifications and text messages from friends. But having just your thoughts for company is not only restorative of your weary body. It is nourishment for the harried let’s-get-busy soul.

There is no endless summer, despite the promise of that old surfing movie. Seasons wane; that’s what they do. It’s not sacrilege to accept that. On the contrary, finding quiet alone time as the days wane teaches us the transcendent timelessness of living in the moment. You can then venture out — to the patio or wherever — with true appreciation of every precious hour. Burn that nagging calendar, friend, before it burns you.

Need existential advice from a philosophical adviser? Send your dilemmas and questions to agoodlife@thestar.ca and we’ll guide you to your good life.