Mommy Dreariest

I'm a woman in my early 40s, married for 12 years. I gave up my career as a dancer to be a mom. I can afford not to work, as my husband makes great money. However, my kids are now 12 and 13 and don't need me like they did when they were little. I feel as if I don't have any purpose in my life, and it's getting me down. I can't go back to dancing now. What do I do?

--At Loose Ends

Sure, your kids still need you, but mainly to drive them places and then (ideally) be kidnapped by Mexican drug cartel members, only to be miraculously released just when they need a ride home. In fact, in these modern times, it can feel like much of your job as a mother could be done by a stern-voiced Uber driver. This is a problem. As social psychologist Todd Kashdan explains, "Years of research on the psychology of well-being have demonstrated that often human beings are happiest when they are engaged in" activities that bring meaning to their lives. As I explain in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck," living meaningfully means being bigger than just yourself. It means making a difference -- making the world a better place because you were here. You do that by, for example, easing people's suffering -- and you don't have to be a hospice nurse to do that. You can do as my wonderfully cranky Venice neighbor @MrsAbbotKinney does as an adult literacy volunteer -- teach people how to read. I always get a little misty-eyed when I see her tweets about taking one of the people she's tutored to apply for their first library card. Because doing kind acts for others appears to boost general life satisfaction, doing volunteer work should lead you to feel more fulfilled. This is especially important in a world where daily hardships involve things like struggling to remember your new PIN to get milk delivered from the online supermarket -- as opposed to trekking through a snowstorm to the freezing-cold barn so you can get friendly with the down-there on a bitchy cow.