How to Want Less
The secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff.
March 2022
In This Issue
How to find happiness: the satisfaction trap, friendship, and changing your personality. Plus the betrayal of Afghan allies, the myth of ‘the Latino vote,’ bald eagles, Sheila Heti, Method acting, lateness, and more.
Cover Stories
It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart
The older we get, the more we need our friends—and the harder it is to keep them.
I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality
The results were mixed.
Get the digital edition of this issue.
Subscribers can access PDF versions of every issue in The Atlantic archive. When you subscribe, you’ll not only enjoy all of The Atlantic’s writing, past and present; you’ll also be supporting a bright future for our journalism.Features
The Betrayal
America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan added moral injury to military failure. But a group of soldiers, veterans, and ordinary citizens came together to try to save Afghan lives and salvage some American honor.
Dispatches
Danielle Del Plato There’s No Such Thing as ‘the Latino Vote’
Why can’t America see that?
Joakim Eskildsen Close to Home
What a photographer found when he trained his camera on his own family
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Gabriela Pesqueira. Sources: Des Willie / BBCAmerica / Sid Gentle; Erin Simkin / Hulu; Michele K. Short / HBO Hollywood Discovers the Middle-Aged Woman
Thanks to the streaming wars, stars in their 40s are finally getting interesting roles.
Daniele Castellano The Madness of Method Acting
Does acting need to be grueling to be good?
Dan Winters America’s Love-Hate Relationship With the Bald Eagle
Revered as a national symbol, reviled as an actual bird
Linda Merad The Smutty Mystic
What everyone gets wrong about Sheila Heti’s fiction
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: The Bad Guys Are Winning
Readers respond to our December 2021 cover story and more.
Tim Lahan An Ode to Being Late
Either you’re early or you’re late. I choose tardiness.
Poetry
Gabriela Pesqueira
