Feeling sad, lonely? Making friends as an adult is hard. Your front porch can help.

In a recent essay for The Atlantic, “How America Got Mean,” David Brooks argues that our fellow citizens are both overwhelmingly sad and angry − to the point that being rude and downright mean to one another is the everyday norm.

Brooks writes: “We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.”